COTABATO CITY – Authorities have confirmed a polio case involving a three-month old baby in this city and assured that continuous monitoring of other cases has been intensified to prevent an unlikely polio virus spread here and in other parts of Central Mindanao.
The unnamed infant was admitted earlier this week at the Cotabato Regional and Medical Center here for fever and paralysis of one leg, the Department of Health-Region 12 reported yesterday.
DoH-Region 12 information officer Jenny Panizalez said the CRMC management has secluded or quarantined the child after initial tests found the baby to have contracted poliomyelitis.
Apart from the infant patient, no new confirmed infection has been reported as of yesterday across Region 12 even as higher DoH officials suspected a number of polio cases in other parts of the country.
DoH Undersecretary Eric Domingo had earlier reported seven Acute Flacid Paralysis cases in the Zamboanga Peninsula in their current monitoring activities.
“All cases of AFP or kids who have sudden weakness of lower extremities have been observed, tested, and checked if it’s polio and we are doing this all over the country. But so far, of all AFP cases, we only had two confirmed cases,” Domingo said. “There’s no additional confirmed cases. The only confirmed cases are still from Lanao and Laguna,” he added.
To prevent the spread of polio, the DoH will pilot mass polio vaccination in Davao City, Lanao del Sur, and Lanao del Norte, said Domingo, noting that supplemental polio vaccination in Metro Manila has been ongoing.
Officials of the Ministry of Health in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which covers Lanao del Sur, said parallel monitoring and preventive measures on polio cases have been launched. (Ali Macabalang)
