KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia’s health authorities on Sunday said they are working with UNICEF to bring polio vaccines to the state of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, where the country’s first polio case in nearly three decades was detected last week.
A three-month-old infant was diagnosed with polio on Dec. 6 after being admitted to hospital with a fever and muscle weakness, the first such case since 1992.
It comes after the Philippines, north of Borneo, reported its first cases of polio since 1993 in September.
Malaysia’s health ministry had said the child was infected with a polio strain that shared genetic links with the virus detected in the Philippines.
“We are planning to work with the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, to get vaccine supply at a low cost for an immunization program for non-citizen children in Sabah,” Director-General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a statement.
Noor Hisham said the plan is to have UNICEF subsidize the cost of the…
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