WHO team that took on polio in India joins fight against Ebola in Africa

The WHO team of mainly epidemiologists has been deployed for a three-month mission and will help train government health workers in the two countries to study and analyse how often the disease occurs in different groups and why.

According to health officials, tracing affected persons and their contacts, and monitoring active cases through a sustained surveillance system, is considered crucial to controlling any outbreak, apart from treating confirmed cases.

The latest outbreak of the deadly virus has claimed the lives of 8,626 people with 3,605 confirmed deaths in Liberia and 3,145 in Sierra Leone.

Pradeep Diwan, administrative officer of WHO’s country office in India, told the Indian Express: “We received a request from officers in charge of Ebola from our headquarters in Geneva on December 20 to send surveillance medical officers who have worked on our polio project to Africa.”

Diwan added that India’s experience in eradicating polio was a key factor behind the request. “They felt that we could help support the governments in the two African countries because of our experience in supporting health systems here in eradicating polio, which was seen as a near-impossible task, and the experience we have gained in implementing the public health policy on polio in India.”

In fact, the urgency of the request was such, Diwan said, that “we had to hurry through visas, and sanctions of our team from the polio-endemic areas of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and other states”.

Dr Bruce Aylward, Assistant Director General, WHO, and the organisation’s Ebola Response Lead, said in a statement that the Indian team “will add huge value at this critical point in the response, given their unparalleled surveillance and district operational level skills”.

A senior official with the WHO’s anti-polio drive in India said that “the lack of intensive surveillance and a tracking system of patients was one of the main reasons for the spread of the outbreak at this scale” in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

“Given this situation, the Indian experience with polio was found to have similar management patterns, and is considered the most recent internationally recognised experience at this scale,” added the official who helped identify and delegate duties in the Indian contingent.

“Our doctors are working with health workers at the grassroots and training them through field trips to put together data of active cases and then trace their contacts,” the official said.

He added that lessons from the polio programme in India, including the role of of grassroot-level health workers, and involving community and religious leaders, were also being shared.

According to another senior WHO official, the Indian team’s role will be critical because the Ebola numbers have begun to dip and the collection of data will now be crucial in identifying high-risk areas and formulating policy decisions specific to them.