HOW do you make a river off-limits to the public?
This is not to disparage the Mandaue City Government directive to make Butuanon River, Mahiga Creek and the Tipolo River off-limits to the public to prevent the spread of the poliovirus after polio reappeared in Cebu. But Mayor Jonas Cortes has to be clear about what he means by off-limits and how he intends to convince residents of the importance of the prohibition.
The off-limits order was the first step of the mayor as he also said he intends to come up with a better-prepared and coordinated course of action together with other affected local government units and experts on polio and rivers in the next days.
That must have been fine in other times except that the past few weeks have shown the importance of accurate and complete information when it comes to a public health emergency.
The reappearance of polio in the country comes when people are anxious about the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) amid the growing number of deaths and infections in several countries, including the Philippines.
The order to place rivers off-limits as a move against polio could be taken as similar to the quarantine directive in the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak. A knee-jerk reaction, an ill-planned situation and ineffective control, at least until the government found ways to rationalize their moves and consider standards and procedures on how and where to put people in isolation.
The Research Institute of Tropical Medicine of the Department of Health (DOH) announced Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020, that water samples from the Butuanon River in Mandaue City tested positive for what many thought was an already extinct poliovirus. While the samples showed the presence of the virus, the DOH stated there is no polio infection case in Cebu or in the region.
Poliomyelitis, or polio, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is a highly infectious viral disease that mainly affects children. A SunStar Cebu report quoted the WHO as saying the virus is transmitted person-to-person and is spread mainly through the fecal-oral route. It can also spread through contaminated water or food.
The disease was believed eradicated decades ago through a successful worldwide campaign of foundations and civic organizations. Rotary International became a leading advocate in polio eradication, helping immunize “more than 2.5 billion children against polio in 122 countries,” it said on its website at www.endpolio.org. “We have reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent worldwide and we won’t stop until we end the disease for good,” it added.
At the same time, the campaign cited the need for accurate information sharing which can be as important as vaccines in the fight to end polio.
The finding of the poliovirus in the Butuanon River does not present a public health emergency, but with concern over the spread of the Covid-19, the reappearance of the poliovirus adds to the people’s worries.