Poon said ever since a boy in Tuaran was detected with polio last December, they had made massive efforts to stem the spread of the disease.
Dismissing notions that the health authorities were not doing enough, he said: “We are actually doing a lot of work and have a lot of people on the ground. We have carried out scores of immunisation programmes all over Sabah, providing vaccines to children five and below.
“We are going all out to every corner of Sabah, we are doing our very best – don’t worry,” he told FMT.
He said the health department was providing free polio immunisation to all children, including non-citizens.
The immunisation programme includes many rural clinics.
Malaysian Medical Association president Dr N Ganabaskaran had previously called for the mobilisation of all doctors in Sabah to ensure the success of the state’s mass immunisation programme against polio.
Ganabaskaran feared that a shortage of manpower might be an obstructing factor, saying he believed the manpower needed to carry out the mass vaccination was inadequate as primary healthcare providers in the state had a heavy work burden.
He suggested that the government make use of every available doctor in the state as well as housemen and ward managers.
Meanwhile, health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said up to Jan 21, a total of 34,692 children aged five and below had been given Dosage 1 of the oral polio vaccine (OPV) in Sabah.
Up to yesterday, he said, 17 districts in the state had started the 2019/2020 Sabah Polio Immunisation Campaign (KIPS). The campaign kicked off on Dec 27 last year.
The districts are Tuaran, Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan, Kinabatangan, Tawau, Semporna, Ranau, Keningau, Tenom, Tambunan, Nabawan, Tongod, Kudat, Pitas, Penampang, Putatan and Lahad Datu.
“The KIPS will be implemented in other districts in phases,” he said, in a statement on his Facebook page.
Hisham said fieldwork in Sabah was quite challenging due to many socio-economic issues.
He commended health personnel at the front lines, including from the state health department and the health ministry’s headquarters, who “worked tirelessly to plan, strategise and implement efforts to stem the disease from spreading further”.
Hisham said the first phase involved the study of stool samples from 20 healthy children to detect the polio virus as well as the provision of polio immunisation, using Pentaxim or Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV), to children where the cases were confirmed.
The second phase, which is being carried out now, involves providing the OPV to all children aged five and below, Hisham said.