Polio Cases Suspected After a Decade

Baghdad – Health Ministry of Iraq said on Wednesday it had thought that it was initially suspected polio case in 14 years, which could have started in neighboring Syria where affirmed cases have started a nationwide alert.

The suspected case was found in a young person in Bab al-Sham close Baghdad, Ziad Tariq ministry spokesman told AFP.

He said the case was not yet affirmed and that specimens had been sent to the US for further testing, with results to be out by Sunday.

In the event that the case is affirmed, it might turn into the first instance of polio in Iraq since 2000.

Anbar, a transcendently Sunni area in western Iraq, has been long been a source of agitation in Iraq.

Earlier in January, anti-government fighters took control of the sum of the Anbar city, and some parts of the provincial capital Ramadi, some of which in any case they hold.

Before the end of last year, the UN affirmed that no less than 17 youngsters in war-wracked Syria had been diseased by polio, in the nation's first cases of the sickness since 1999.

Fifteen of the cases were in the eastern region of Deir Ezzor, huge swathes of which are under militant control.

The outbreak amidst Syria's three-year-old common war incited the WHO and UN children agency, UNICEF to launch an inoculation fight for 23 million kids over the Middle East, which got under way earlier this month.

Tariq said an immunization crusade was at that point under way in Iraq and might run until April 6, well beyond routine childhood inoculations.

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