DAKAR (AlertNet) - "LetÂ?s escape from here and go back home," little Momodou Sakho mumbled to his mother as they waited to see specialists at the University Teaching Hospital in Senegal's capital Dakar.
The two-year-old wailed as he attempted in vain to push his mother into action, unaware that his polio was keeping him in one of the West African country's biggest hospitals.
In the next ward, another polio victim, three-year-old Momodou Ba struggled to his feet and walked over to comfort his new friend and namesake, Momodou.
Both toddlers were diagnosed in January with the highly infectious disease. Caused by a virus, which invades the nervous system, polio can lead to total paralysis in a matter of hours, and at worse, death.
Senegal has been polio-free since December 1998, but with the two new cases became the latest West African country to be re-infected with polio since the second half of 2008, when an outbreak originating in northern Nigeria began spreading west.
The outbreak had already hit Nigeria's neighbours to the north and east -- Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
The new cases have prompted U.N. agencies and their local partners to embark on a cross-border vaccination campaign aimed at immunizing more than 85 million children under the age of
five in 19 countries in West and Central Africa.
"If every child gets vaccinated against polio, the immunity within the population would rise to a level that could stop the transmission of the virus," Gaelle Bausson, a spokeswoman for
the West and Central Africa regional office of the U.N.Children's Fund (UNICEF), told AlertNet.
This strategy, started in 2008, has already yielded some positive results.
Benin, Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic, Ghana, Togo and Niger have managed to contain the outbreak in 2009, UNICEF, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and their partners said in a statement. Meanwhile, the number of cases in Nigeria, the only endemic country in Africa, fell last year.
OBSTACLES TO IMMUNIZATION
Experts say poverty, inadequate health education and lack of access to health care have caused flaws in the process of routine immunization which should normally protect children and
prevent vast, cross-border outbreaks of diseases like polio and measles as seen in west and central Africa.
"Originally, one of the major reasons why there was an outbreak in the region was the refusals and the controversy about the vaccine in Nigeria, but it is evident that the virus is also spreading because routine immunization is not great in most countries in the region," UNICEF's Bausson said.
In the small fishing district of Joal-Fadiouth about 120 km from Dakar, an army of volunteers move from house-to-house to vaccinate children.
It is the second time that they have deployed this year, since it was discovered that one of the 78,000 residents of the district, Momodou Sakho, had contracted polio.
"We must work hard to get people to come out to be vaccinated," Dr Joseph Barboza, the head of the district hospital at Joal-Fadiouth, told AlertNet. "It is tough but we think by using community communication tools we are achieving
success and we are going to continue even after this international campaign."
"If there is one case, there could be more so we must act," Mamadou Seck, one of the volunteers told AlertNet while he put two drops of the polio vaccine into the mouth of a baby, who was
being carried in a sling on her sister's back.
Momodou Sakho's father, a fisherman who earns between $15 and $30 a month, said his family missed out on some of the opportunities to get vaccinated in the past. With five mouths to
feed, he and his wife had to choose between a visit to the health centre or finding food for the children.
"If vaccination is the only method of prevention, then I ask everyone to do all in their power to vaccinate their children," said Ibrahima Sakho.
Despite Momodou's condition, his father said he was uncertain whether the other children had all the required vaccines.
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