RIYADH, 21 November 2006 — The Ministry of Health announced yesterday that visitors from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, whether coming to the Kingdom for business, Umrah, Haj or any other reason, must be administered one dose of oral polio vaccine at least a month before their departure from their respective countries.
The advisory from the ministry comes in the wake of the recent outbreak of poliomyelitis in India, where 522 children were reportedly crippled this year.
However, according to Dr. Amin Mishkhes, director of infectious diseases in the ministry, even adults will have to go through the immunization process even if they had taken polio drops during their childhood.
“All visitors, whether children or adults, must get one dose of OPV (oral polio vaccine) to get visa. We have advised the Foreign Ministry accordingly, “ Mishkhes told Arab News.
He said that in the past children under 15 were required to be vaccinated.
“However, after we discovered through the WHO that there have been cases of polio in India, it is now obligatory for all visitors from the subcontinent to get themselves vaccinated against polio when traveling to the Kingdom for whatever purpose,” Mishkhes said, adding that the incidence of polio in India had gone up during the last two years.
Other than polio, all pilgrims bound for the Kingdom have to be vaccinated against meningitis, while those from Africa need to be vaccinated against yellow fever.
“We recommend the incoming pilgrims also to be vaccinated against influenza,” said the doctor.
It is the first time that adults and children have been put together for the vaccination program. Saudi Arabia has been polio-free since 1995 and has been careful against letting the virus resurface.
Polio vaccine is usually administered to children below five years of age and never to adults. Until now, all Indians visiting Saudi Arabia just had to produce a certificate showing they had been vaccinated as a child.
J. Wenger, head of India’s National Polio Surveillance Project, has said that adults are not affected by the polio virus. But they can carry the virus, which enters the body through infected water or food. The virus then grows in the stomach for four to six weeks and spreads through the excreta of the infected person during this time. Adults, however, carry lower frequency of the virus. It does not cripple them, since they had been immunized in childhood.
