NAIROBI — Somalia is suffering an “explosive” outbreak of polio and now has more cases than the rest of the world combined, an official said Friday.

Vaccination teams face a daunting challenge: accessing areas of Somalia controlled by al-Qaeda-linked militants, where seven of 10 children aren’t fully immunized.

Polio is considered mostly eliminated globally, except in three countries where it is considered endemic: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. India marked a major success in February 2012 by being removed from the World Health Organization’s list of countries plagued by the disease.

Somalia now has 105 cases, figures released Friday show, and an additional 10 cases have been confirmed across the border in a Kenyan refugee camp filled with Somalis. Globally there have been 181 cases of polio this year, including those in Somalia and Kenya.

Vaccination campaigns in Somalia have reached 4 million people since the outbreak began in May, but health officials have limited access to about 600,000 children who live in areas of Somalia controlled by the armed Islamist group al-Shabab.

“It’s very worrying because it’s an explosive outbreak,” said Oliver Rosenbauer of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Somalia was removed from the list of endemic polio countries in 2001, and this year’s outbreak is the second since then.

Source: AP