{{The World Health Organization has declared the spread of polio is an international public health emergency.}}<\/p>\n
Outbreaks in Asia, Africa and Middle East are an “extraordinary event” needing a co-ordinated “international response”, the agency says.<\/p>\n
It recommends citizens of affected countries travelling abroad carry a vaccination certificate.<\/p>\n
It says Pakistan, Cameroon, and Syria “pose the greatest risk of further wild poliovirus exportations in 2014.”<\/p>\n
{{‘Ongoing risk’}}<\/p>\n
“The conditions for a public health emergency of international concern have been met,” said Bruce Aylward, WHO Assistant Director General.<\/p>\n
He was speaking after last week’s emergency meeting in Geneva on the spread of polio which included representatives of the affected countries.<\/p>\n
“The international spread of polio to date in 2014 constitutes an ‘extraordinary event’ and a public health risk to other states for which a co-ordinated international response is essential,” the WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee said in statement.<\/p>\n
“If unchecked, this situation could result in failure to eradicate globally one of the world’s most serious vaccine preventable diseases.”<\/p>\n
The WHO also lists Afghanistan, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Israel, Somalia and Nigeria as “posing an ongoing risk for new wild poliovirus exportations in 2014.”<\/p>\n
It is only the second time in the WHO’s history it has made such a declaration, the first being during the swine flu pandemic of 2009, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva reports.<\/p>\n
She says the polio virus is endemic in just three countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. But attacks on vaccination campaigns in Pakistan in particular have allowed the virus to spread across borders.<\/p>\n
Syria, which was polio free for 14 years, was re-infected with polio virus from Pakistan.<\/p>\n
Refugees are still pouring out of Syria, to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and checking whether all of them have been vaccinated will be impossible, our correspondent says.<\/p>\n
{{wirestory}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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