- South Sudan hit after four years polio-free
- Forty cases recorded; WHO team sent in
By Skye Wheeler
JUBA, Sudan, March 24 (Reuters) - South Sudan health officials on Tuesday said they were facing a health emergency after recording 40 cases of polio in their region.
The under-developed territory has been struggling to stem an outbreak of the debilitating disease since it reappeared after a four-year absence last year.
"It is considered...a national health emergency," senior southern health ministry official Anthony Laku Steven told Reuters.
Officials from the U.N.'s World Health Organisation said they had sent in a 20-strong team of experts to try to control the spread of the highly contagious virus that mostly affects children aged under five.
"It is not showing any sign of remitting and we have limited time before the rainy season," the head of the WHO's southern polio programme Afework Assefa told Reuters. Seasonal rains and insecurity often make it hard for vaccination teams to reach people in remote areas.
The semi-autonomous south of Sudan has been struggling to improve its health sector since a 2005 peace deal ended a decades-long civil war with the north.
Until March 2008, south Sudan was considered polio-free, with no new cases since 2004 when 12 people were infected in an outbreak. One in about 200 polio infections causes permanent paralysis and five to 10 percent of those cases lead to death, according to the WHO.
(Editing by Andrew Heavens and Mark Trevelyan)