Associated Press

Jakarta, May 14:

Indonesia today confirmed two more cases of polio, including the first in the country’s teeming capital, as it struggled to contain the first outbreak of the disease in 10 years.

The total number of case in the country is now eight, with several other suspected cases being investigated, said Dr Yus Harman, director of epidemiology and immunisation at the department of health.

The polio victim in Jakarta had recently returned from a village in west Java, where the disease first broke out last month, he said.

Children living close to her house in Jakarta had already been vaccinated, he said. The 20-month old toddler was being treated in a hospital, he said.

“We are determined to combat this disease,” he said declining to speculate on the total number of victims he expected to see as a result of the outbreak, saying he did not want to cause unnecessary panic.

Polio spreads through sewage-contaminated water and usually infects young children, attacking the nervous system and causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and sometimes death. It has been eradicated in much of the world, but remains endemic in Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Niger, Afghanistan and Egypt.

Indonesia had not seen a polio case since 1995, and health experts say the latest outbreak is genetically linked to the virus circulating in Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The disease was likely imported to those countries from Nigeria, where polio vaccinations were suspended in 2003 after radical Islamic preachers warned parents not to vaccinate children against polio because they believed it was part of a US plot against Muslims.

Experts say the case in Indonesia likely came from a traveller returning home from one of the three countries with a similar virus.