66th Case of Polio Reported in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia – A new case of polio was found in Indonesia’s Lampung province, bringing the country’s total known number of people suffering from the disease to 66.

The World Health Organization, in its latest report on the subject, issued Friday, said the new case was a 3-year old girl who began suffering from paralysis on June 4.

She lives in Lampung province on Sumatra island, next to Java and about 124 miles northeast of the capital, Jakarta.

Another case was reported June 21 in Central Java province’s Demak district.

An emergency campaign to curb the disease involved vaccinating about 6.5 million children in West Java province, where the first case was found in April, and in its neighboring provinces of Jakarta and Banten.

A second round of vaccinations was completed on June 29 in the same three provinces, three days after a similar, separate campaign targeting 78,000 children under 5 years old in Central Java.

Polio is spread when unvaccinated people come into contact with the feces of those with the virus, often through water. It usually attacks the nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and sometimes death, though only about one in 200 of those infected ever develop symptoms.