The Federal Government has dispatched a team of experts from the Federal Ministry of Health and the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, to Cross River State to investigate a suspected polio case.
The Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, confirmed this to Channels Television via a phone interview.
The case, involving an infant, was detected in Ekpene-Eki community of Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State and reported on Monday.
The Minister said that although he suspected the child’s leg may have been a case of deformity known as club foot, the Ministry would let Nigerians know the exact situation as soon as a proper diagnosis is done.
In an interview, the infant’s aunt stated that the symptoms in the child had remained without proper medical attention, as the only health facility in the area, seemed not to be able to handle the case.
Director General of the Cross River State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Betta Edu, however insisted that Cross River State remained polio free.
In order to clear all doubts, she maintained that, “a surveillance team had been called to get samples from the child in order to test and have a concrete cause of the partial paralysis.”
She then added that until the test results were released, which would take less than a week, the main reason for Anthony’s condition could not be placed.
Fresh cases of wild polio virus were detected in Nigeria’s northeast state of Borno in 2016, dashing the country’s expectations of attaining polio-free status after two years of non-occurrence of the poliovirus.
The federal government had however responded swiftly by deploying large-scale immunisation and surveillance systems to prevent more children from being affected. (Channels TV)
•Health Minister, Prof. Adewole.
