India shares land borders with both countries and had received its polio free certification in 2014
Even as India completes 13 polio free years, neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan have both reported one case each of wild polio virus this week, according to the latest update from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Pakistan also reported 20 positive environmental samples.
India shares land borders with both countries. India received its polio free certification in 2014 and has since not reported any cases of wild polio virus. The last case in India was reported in 2011 – according to WHO norms a country has to be free of any new cases for three years before the polio free certification is given. However cases in the neighbourhood are always a cause of concern because of the possibility of spread through travellers. The other countries that have reported cases of wild polio virus this week are
Côte d’Ivoire, Congo, Ghana, Liberia, Niger Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Yemen. Several of these countries also reported vaccine derived polio cases.
India too has occasionally reported cases of vaccine derived polio infection, causing many experts to argue that it is time the oral polio vaccine that is known to cause polio in a small number of recipients, be discontinued and the Universal Immunisation Programme shifts completely to injectable polio vaccines.
In a review published last year authors from ICMR, AIIMS Gorakhpur etc had written: “n addition, the emergence of VDPV is one of the global challenges for the eradication of poliomyelitis. VDPVs continue to affect different parts of the world; 1081 cases occurred in 2020 and 682 cases in 2021. There are several reasons that may have caused the increase in circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) after the “switch” from the trivalent to the bivalent oral polio vaccine. One reason is the low vaccination rate among the targeted population, which has been further aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
