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Health authorities have launched a nationwide polio alert and will spend the next two days tracking down passengers on the same flight as a man infected with polio.
The 22-year-old Pakistani man was diagnosed with the infection - the first reported in Australia in 21 years - after returning to Australia from a holiday in Pakistan. He was on Thai Airlines flight TG999 from Bangkok on July 2.
Victoria's chief health officer Dr John Carnie said yesterday authorities were trying to contact passengers. "We started this process last night, so are still to find out if we have in fact managed to get in touch with many of these people," Carnie told Sky News.
"But certainly over the next day or two we will continue to do that and we will offer the people on that flight both immunisation... as well as information about polio virus."
Healthcare workers who cared for the patient would also be screened although the risk to them was low.
Emergency and intensive care units across the country are on alert for returning travellers with polio symptoms. These include fever, vomiting and muscle stiffness and, if it progresses to a major illness, severe muscle pain and stiffness of the neck and back with paralysis.
Carnie said the patient was admitted to Box Hill Hospital after complaining of symptoms but had recovered from his initial paralysis. He will remain isolated in hospital until he is diagnosed as free of the disease. People in his household are also in home quarantine.
However, the general public was not at risk because the patient had been isolated since he presented with symptoms.
Polio has been wiped out except for a few countries, including India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. The polio vaccine is included in Australia's child immunisation scheme.
Australia's chief medical officer Professor John Horvath praised doctors for detecting the virus.
"It really is a huge credit to the doctors... that something most probably they'd never seen before they'd recognised as polio," he told ABC radio.
- AAP
