Polio Warnings Were Ignored Five Years Ago Says Ex Un Consultant

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Sabah assistant minister Jenifer Lasimbang was a consultant with Unicef between 2014 and 2017. (Facebook pic)KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s current polio problem could have been averted if the federal Health Ministry had heeded warnings five years ago by the United Nations children’s fund, a former consultant with Unicef said today
The ex-consultant, Jenifer Lasimbang, worked with the UN agency between 2014 and 2017. She is currently Sabah’s assistant education minister
She said Unicef tried to convince the Health Ministry to vaccinate the undocumented population in the state, but failed
The health ministry is now planning to vaccinate all foreigners in Sabah. Children under five years old will also get an additional polio vaccination
“Sabah has a big population of people who are not registered and without identification papers and, thus, for certain they were unvaccinated,” she said at a press conference here today
Figures from the Home Ministry state that there are some 500,000 undocumented persons in Sabah and 95% of the children from this group had not been immunised
Lasimbang said that after she left Unicef she had also sought the help of Papar MP Ahmad Hassan to bring up in Parliament the need to vaccinate the undocumented persons in Sabah
“Ahmad Hassan also sought action by Putrajaya to call for international intervention to resolve the problem
“However, the health minister had responded that a fee of RM40 for registration and additional RM40 for one vaccine would be charged to non-citizens and the undocumented,” she said
Lasimbang said the growing number of undocumented persons in Sabah exposes the state to various diseases. “Now it’s polio, we don’t know what else we have yet to detect.”Malaysia was declared polio free 27 years ago. The first polio case since then was detected last month in Tuaran with a three-month-old baby boy confirmed to be infected by the virus. - FMT

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