Ministry of Public Health claims Polio eradication in Afghanistan
With concerns rising over the spread of infectious diseases and viruses in Afghanistan, the Taliban government officials have claimed that they have eradicated polio in the country.
Abdul Salam Hanafi, the administrative deputy of the Acting Prime Minister’s office, asserted in a virtual meeting with the head of the World Health Organization that polio has been eradicated in Afghanistan.
He made this claim despite several positive cases of polio being recorded in the past year.
The latest confirmed polio case approved by health officials in Nangarhar province was the fifth recorded case of the disease in the last solar year, confirmed by Dr. Nik Mohammad, the head of the polio eradication campaign in Nangarhar in October 2023.
This comes as, in the 1401 solar year, only one positive case of polio was reported in Afghanistan. The increase in positive disease cases in 1402 has heightened concerns about ineffective strategies to overcome polio.
The official virtual session between the regional health organization representatives, Qalandar Ebad, the acting Minister of Public Health of the Taliban, and Abdul Salam Hanafi, was announced on the ministry website on Wednesday, March 27th.
In the announcement, it was claimed, “Following repeated vaccinations by technical teams, childhood paralysis has been eradicated from all parts of Afghanistan.”
Polio is an acute viral disease caused by the poliovirus, which typically affects the person’s gastrointestinal system and rarely attacks the central nervous system.
It’s worth noting that in addition to polio, there has been a recurring increase in positive cases of other infectious and viral diseases, including tuberculosis, in recent years.
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