Outbreak Leaves Crippled Children and Unanswered Questions.(Brief Article)

2001 JAN 17 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Sandy Torres sits in a wheelchair in the front of his sixth grade class, learning anatomy, though his own body is forever damaged by a disease that has scientists scrambling for answers.

Sandy, 13 years of age, came down with polio in September 2000, nine years after scientists believed it had been eliminated from the Western Hemisphere. His mother said he was never vaccinated because she didn't know he needed to be.

"It's not easy watching your child, who ran and played like all the other children, and now he can't walk," Sylvia Altagracia Nunez said.

Sandy is one of six confirmed cases in the Dominican Republic. There is a seventh in Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola, and 15 suspected cases are being investigated by local health workers, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Pan American Health Organization based in Washington, D.C.

The outbreak indicated that the health care systems failed to follow through on a basic vaccination program, and it also raised larger concerns about the worldwide effort to eradicate polio. For the victims, the questions are simpler, and harder to face.

Will three-year-old Erika Pimentel, who now drags herself across the floor with her hands, ever be able to run around the neighborhood, tiring her mother out like she used to? How will six-year-old Alejandrina Arismendy, now unable to stand on her own, make it down the steep hill outside her home to school?

Polio is a highly infectious disease that usually strikes children under five. It damages the spinal cord and brain, causing paralysis, and sometimes death. It is transmitted by ingesting food or water contaminated by fecal matter of an infected person.