World Polio Day: The Need for Uninterrupted Vaccination During a Pandemic

Hyderabad: World Polio Day Observed around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic on Saturday, experts emphasized the need to continue the polio vaccination program to maintain India’s polio-free condition.
Since March 2020, pandemics have disrupted life-saving immunization efforts around the world, putting millions of children at risk. sick Like polio, diphtheria, measles.
Such interruptions in routine immunization services can be unprecedented since the extended immunization program (EPI) was launched in both the government and the private sector in the 1970s.
This can significantly reduce the population’s level of immunity to polio, said Dr. Preethi Sharma, a pediatrician at KIMS Cuddles in Condapur.
“Most hospitals have a separate outpatient department for cases of fever or suspected Covid, and only healthy babies / children can enter the vaccination area. Parents are at risk of Covid infection. vaccination A lack of vaccines can certainly increase the risk of getting a disease that can be prevented by vaccines such as polio. ”
To eradicate polio, parents must vaccinate their children with OPV and IPV and continue to receive the vaccine during government polio vaccination. Both vaccines are very safe and should be used on an ongoing basis. The government needs to campaign to strengthen the impetus for vaccination.
After a difficult battle and multiple doses of oral polio vaccine, India was declared poliovirus (wild poliovirus) in March 2014. This was a big achievement as India was considered one of the most difficult countries.
“India is wild Poliovirus Currently, there are cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) in disease-free countries. The emergence of VDPV disease is a known risk of OPV (oral polio vaccine) vaccination, with weakened live viruses vaccinated with OPV beginning to become virulent and several children of vaccinated Raku. Causes illness. .. ”
We need to focus on immunizing more and more children with IPV (injectable polio vaccine). Not only does this pose no risk of VDPV, but it also protects 99% from wild polio and VDPV diseases.
Until all children in the country are no longer vaccinated against IPV, there is a risk of recurrence of polio from neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan, which are currently the only polio endemic countries in the world, or from imports from VDPV. ..
Another important step taken by the government is to start using inactivated (injectable) polio vaccine (IPV) on a regular schedule. IPV has been used for many years in private practitioners and corporate hospitals, but can now be widely adopted by the government for routine immunization schedules. IPV protects against polio without the risk of vaccine-derived polio. Once the wild poliovirus is eliminated, OPV should be phased out.
The government has already removed Type 2 (switching from trivalent OPV to divalent OPV), including OPV. That is why the type 2 component contained in trivalent OPV accounts for more than 90% of all cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus (type 2 is not contained in divalent OPV).
“Every year and across generations, the Government of India and the people here have taken a mission route with the vision of eradicating deadly polio. Administering polio vaccine to newborns addresses the spread. It was a small but most effective means for poliovirus and the same commitment required in these COVID-19 times to put an end to the deadly. Coronavirus..
Dr. Ravindra Parigi, a Neonatologist at Medicover, said: Hospital, Visakhapatnam.
On World Polio Day 2020, it is important for India and the world to see the learning gained from past efforts to overcome the current Covid-19 crisis. Polio still exists in developing countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, but he added that it has declined by more than 99% compared to the 1980s.