Health emergency declared in 12 regions of Peru due to high risk of polio and measles outbreak

The Government of Peru declared a health emergency for 90 days in 12 regions of the country, including Lima and the neighboring province of Callao (west), due to the high risk of polio and measles outbreak, according to a decree published today, Thursday, in the official newspaper “El Peruano”.

The decree specified that the sanitary emergency includes the departments of Amazonas (north), Arequipa (south), Lambayeque (northwest), Loreto (north), Madre de Dios (east), Moquegua (south), Puno (southeast), San Martin (center), Tacna (south), Tumbes (northwest) and Ucayali (east).

Within this framework, the Ministry of Health and the regional directorates of the area are responsible for immediately carrying out what is contemplated in the Action Plan for the sanitary emergency “due to a high risk of outbreak” of poliomyelitis and measles in the corresponding departments.

The document detailed that the emergency was declared after considering a report of the General Directorate of Strategic Interventions in Public Health, which concluded that “there is evidence of several factors that put the mentioned regions at high risk of an outbreak”.

It specified that once the sanitary emergency has been declared, the intervening entities must report on the activities and resources implemented within the framework of the Action Plan and the results achieved.

The decision to declare a sanitary emergency in 12 regions of the South American country was taken on Wednesday in a session of the Council of Ministers, according to what was announced to the press by the head of the Health Ministry, Rosa Gutiérrez.

After the weekly ministerial meeting, the official said that within the framework of the measure, the Peruvian government aims to vaccinate 2.5 million children under five years of age against poliomyelitis and measles.

She added that they would allocate a budget of more than 27 million soles (more than 7 million dollars) to purchase vaccines against these diseases and to hire some 20,000 brigades to carry out the immunization in the localities.

He recalled that a case of polio had not been reported in the country for 32 years, and now there is a “focus” due to the detection in the Peruvian northeast, so “we must do a permanent search and map the whole country” to address the situation.

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