Indonesia Polio Outbreak Response Assessment (OBRA)
Dr Vinod Bura, Riza Dewantara, Winda Hutami, Dr Mushtofa Kamal, Mindo Nainggolan, Dr Olivi Silalahi, Dr Fina Tams and Endang Utami, WHO Country Office, Indonesia, and Dr Sudhir Joshi, WHO SEARO
Location: Virtual meeting
Date: 6-14 April 2020
Participants: The 24 member team was composed of experts from GPEI partners and the Ministry of Health of Indonesia.
Purpose:
To assess the quality of the polio outbreak response against performance standards, and to determine the status of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 1 (cVDPV1) transmission in Indonesia based on evidence provided by the country team. All interviews were done through tele-video conference using standardized OBRA tools and guidance.
Details:
In February 2019, Indonesia notified WHO of a polio outbreak in Papua province following detection of cVDPV1 from an Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) case and two additional healthy children who had genetic divergence of 61nt and 58nt. In response to this notification, two rounds of polio campaigns were conducted with bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (bOPV) targeting around 1.2 million children less than 15 years of age in Papua and West Papua provinces. The overall coverage in the second supplementary immunization activities (SIA) round was >90% in the outbreak zone, but coverage in the highland districts of Papua was below average. Polio surveillance activities were enhanced, and a Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis rate of ≥3 was achieved in 2019. However, overall surveillance quality was still below target in these provinces.
After reviewing the data and documentation, the OBRA team concluded that the cVDPV1 transmission in Papua has been stopped within the globally expected time line and there was no evidence of ongoing transmission. The team recommended that Indonesia should maintain high quality polio eradication activities in all provinces, particularly in Papua, Papua Barat and other high-risk provinces, until at least global polio eradication is achieved and OPV use is ceased globally
Repost from Global Immunization News (GIN), June 2020 edition. Accessible here
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