The World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday expressed concerns about the re-emergence of polio.
For a while, it was believed that polio had been eradicated in the face of effective vaccination.
Speaking at the 63rd session of the WHO Regional Committee for Southeast Asia and a meeting of health ministers of East and Southeast Asian countries under the WHO, the organisation's director-general Margaret Chan said yesterday that polio cases were being detected in India, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"With migration, the disease has also spread to the border areas of Burma and Indonesia," she said.
Held in Bangkok, the regional meeting was attended by representatives from Bangladesh, Bhutan, North Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Burma, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and East Timor.
Chan advised governments not to lower their guards against polio.
Dr Rajesh Bhatia, an adviser to the WHO's Southeast Asia Regional Office (SEARO), said he was also concerned about the improper use of antibiotics.
"Improper use accounts for 50 per cent of drug-resistance cases," he said. "This is not a small issue."
He said drug companies had stopped investing in new antibiotics given that patients develop resistance to drugs just three or four years after they are launched.
"The investment on each drug is about US$500 million," or Bt15.5 billion, he said.
With such high investment costs, drug firms prefer to spend money on developing medications for non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.
Dr Samlee Plianbangchang, who heads SEARO, called for careful prescription of medicines, proper training on communicable-disease control and an efficient monitoring system to detect drug resistance.