Johannesburg:
A rare and unusually fatal outbreak of polio in Republic of Congo has caused more than 200 deaths in the Central African nation, a UNICEF spokesman said today.
The disease usually strikes children under 5, but most of those affected have been young men between the ages of 15 and 24, said Martin Dawes, the agency's West Africa spokesman.
"Polio is an absolutely a red hot travelling virus, which will affect a lot of people if immunisation rates are not good," Dawes said. "The fact we've have this virus means there was a hole in the immunisation rates in the past."
Republic of Congo, a tiny nation often overshadowed by its much larger neighbour, Congo, was wracked by successive civil wars in the 1990s.
Up to 10 per cent of people paralysed by polio can die when their breathing muscles stop working. But Dawes said that 42 per cent of the cases in Republic of Congo had been fatal.
The vast majority of them have occurred in the oil-rich coastal port city of Pointe Noire.
The World Health Organisation, UNICEF and Rotary International said they began vaccinating some 3 million people in the Republic of Congo, Congo and nearby Angola last month. International aids groups have begun emergency immunisations in Pointe Noire and will continue them through the end of the year.
There is no cure for polio, which can only be prevented by immunisation. Polio is carried in the feces of the infected and often spread by contaminated water. The dreaded paralysing disease has been stamped out in the industrialised world but remains a threat in parts of Africa.