Description | New York Declares Polio Emergency: Should India Worry?

Story so far: In early September, New York declared a state disaster emergency after poliovirus was found in three county wastewater samples. was detected. In India, environmental surveillance of sewage samples in Kolkata this year detected vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV), but the Ministry of Health said such incidents could occur. In all countries where oral polio vaccine (OPV) is administered. The ministry also added that the last time such a VDPV of his was detected was in New Delhi in 2018.

The United States is now on the list of 30 countries produced by the United States. The global polio eradication movement, if either imported wild or vaccine-derived poliovirus or circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) has been identified. This list also includes Israel, Ukraine, Nigeria, Egypt, and others. Afghanistan and Pakistan are two countries where polio is endemic and are therefore not on the outbreak list.

What is polio disease?

Polio, commonly referred to as polio, is a highly contagious viral disease that can leave patients disabled and even dead. The virus can invade the nervous system and cause complete paralysis in just a few hours.

Early symptoms of infection include fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, a stiff neck, and pain in the hands and feet. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 200 infections lead to irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs. Of these, 5-10% die when the respiratory muscles are affected and immobilized.

There is no known cure for polio. It can only be prevented by vaccination.

Wild-type poliovirus (WPV) has three known strains, types 1, 2 and 3, each with slightly different structures. Immunity to one type does not guarantee immunity to another type.

According to the Global Polio Eradication Drive, only type 1 wild poliovirus is circulating. Type 2 he was declared eradicated in September 2015 and was last detected in India in 1999. Wild poliovirus type 3 was declared eradicated in October 2019.

How does the poliovirus spread?

Poliovirus is most commonly spread via the fecal-oral route. It can also be spread through contaminated water or food. The virus multiplies in the intestine of the host.

vulnerable age group

Most polio cases have been documented in children under the age of five, but anyone who has not been vaccinated can contract the disease.

Types of polio vaccines

There are currently two vaccines available against polio: the oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) and the inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV).

IPV was developed in 1955 by virologist Dr. Jonas Salk. It consists of all three inactivated (killed) poliovirus strains. The vaccine is given by intramuscular or intradermal injection. It produces antibodies in the blood against all three types of poliovirus.

OPV uses a weakened (also called attenuated) form of the poliovirus to allow vaccinated individuals to build immunity to the virus. According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the attenuated virus can replicate in the gut but is “about 10,000 times less able to enter the central nervous system than the wild-type virus.”

Because OPV is administered orally, it is better suited for mass vaccination campaigns than IPV, which must be administered by qualified healthcare workers. Both methods of vaccination are safe, but the live, attenuated virus contained in OPV can cause paralysis in very rare cases. IPV, on the other hand, induces very low levels of immunity in the gut. In such cases, if an IPV-vaccinated person becomes infected with wild poliovirus, there is a risk that the virus will multiply in the gut, be excreted in the faeces, and continue to circulate.

In some severely immunocompromised areas, the shed vaccine virus may continue to circulate for long periods of time, altering its genes. In rare cases, it can mutate into a form that paralyzes humans. This is known as cVDPV and is the form of the virus that has put the United States on the outbreak list.

According to WHO, cVDPV takes a long time to develop. It is generally believed that this strain has been circulating in immunocompromised and non-immunized communities for at least a year.

Polio vaccination in India

India committed to the WHO goal of global polio eradication in 1988. The government initiated National Immunization Day (NID), commonly referred to as the Pulse Her Polio Immunization Program, in 1995 to administer polio eye drops to all children aged 0 to her 5 years. I aimed for In addition, local immunization days are also held annually in high-risk areas.

The country’s last polio case was reported in January 2011 from Howrah District in West Bengal. India was certified polio-free on 27 March 2014, along with her 10 other countries in the WHO South-East Asia Region.

Should India worry about the global resurgence of poliovirus?

India’s proximity to polio-endemic countries Pakistan and Afghanistan and the potential gap in immunization over the past two years due to Covid-19 are of concern. However, according to WHO, “he has no evidence that VDPV is widespread in the community.”

and report Outlining the investigation of Kolkata sewage samples, WHO said India’s acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) surveillance, along with routine immunization and NID, meets recommended global standards. Environmental Surveillance (ES), which regularly collects sewage to check for poliovirus in faeces, complements AFP.

“Gene sequencing of this isolate (a sample from Kolkata) established that it was not related to any of the previously identified VDPV1 viruses and was likely iVDPV (shedded by immunocompromised individuals). ,” said the WHO.

In 2021, India also announced that people will return home from the country Afghanistan Get a polio vaccine as a preventive measure.