Somalia declared free of polio

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - A vaccination campaign has rid Somalia of polio, encouraging hopes that the virus can be halted in other insecure regions, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.

No Somali child has been paralysed by polio in the past year as a result of a huge campaign to repeatedly vaccinate 1.8 million children in the Horn of Africa nation.

Somalia, where more than 10 percent of the population live as refugees after 17 years of conflict, had wiped out the crippling disease in 2002 but it reemerged three years later from a strain that originated in Nigeria.

Nigeria is one of four countries that have never stopped transmission of the virus. Polio, also endemic in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, spreads through contaminated food and water and mainly affects young children.

Some 10,000 volunteers and health workers delivered multiple doses of oral vaccine to children in Somalia's hard-to-reach villages, nomadic communities and makeshift camps that have grown as a result of clashes between Islamic insurgents, warlords and Ethiopian-backed Somali government forces.

Bruce Aylward, director of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, said the campaign showed that the virus could be stopped in highly insecure pockets of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and densely populated corners of India where sanitation facilities are lacking.

"Somalia wasn't lucky the first time," Aylward said in an interview. "What this demonstrates is that this can be done in areas where there are a lot of things outside of your control."

There were 1,308 people crippled by polio worldwide last year, compared to about 350,000 yearly when the eradication drive started in 1988.