South Sudan officials are hopeful the country will soon be
declared polio-free, as the latest round of nationwide polio
immunizations wraps up. On the brink of being polio-free Before
2008, the area that is now South Sudan, had been considered free
of polio. That year the country was re-infected through an
imported strain that originated in Nigeria. In a country with
only a 43 percent routine childhood immunization rate, there was
widespread fear the highly infectious disease could spread. And
it did. In six months after polio reappeared in South Sudan, 64
children were infected. All of them suffered at least partial
paralysis. But now South Sudan is on the brink of being declared
polio-free, according to Dr. Abdi Aden Mohamed, the head of the
World Health Organization in South Sudan. “We are by now without
a case for the last 32-plus months and hopefully, we will be
able to say in four months South Sudan is polio free,” he said.
“We are very cautious in the sense of there are a number of
countries surroundin