Europe was declared free of endemic polio in 2002 and has remained so for over 20 years now
More than 22 years after Europe was declared free of endemic polio, experts from the European Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organisation regional office have sounded a warning in Europe citing the rising number of vaccine derived cases of the disease in recent months.
The countries that they have specifically called out are Spain, Poland, Germany, United Kingdom and Finland. Europe was declared free of endemic polio in 2002 and has remained so for over 20 years now. “The unusually high number of poliovirus detections in recent months has reinforced the urgency of the wake-up call. From September through December 2024, vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (VDPV2) was detected in wastewater systems of 14 cities in five European countries: consecutively in Spain, Poland [6], Germany, the United Kingdom (UK), and Finland. The isolated VDPV2 viruses are linked to a lineage (NIE-ZAS-1) that was first detected in Nigeria in July 2020, and which has travelled in the intervening years to 21 other countries in Africa, causing outbreaks in 15 of them,” Pamela Rendi-Wagner from ECDC and Hans Kluge from WHO Europe wrote in a piece in Eurosurveillance. They said that people with inadequate vaccination may be at a particularly high risk.
Polio is a viral infection that is usually contracted at childhood and can leave a person with a lifelong disability. It can spread from person to person at the time of infection or through contaminated food and water. At present polio is a disease stands eradicated in all countries of the world except Pakistan and Afghanistan. India had its last case in 2011 but continues to remain at a high alert at all times to prevent resurgence given the proximity of both countries. Special measures for example are on at the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj to ensure polio surveillance is at a very high level.
Vaccine derived polio outbreaks though have continues to happen in all countries including in Europe. The most recent ones happened inTajikistan and Ukraine [9] in 2021, and Israel and the UK in 2022. In 2022 and 2023, VDPV2 outbreaks affected countries which had high overall vaccination coverage but localised pockets of under-immunised communities with tight social linkage, Wagner and Kluge wrote in their piece.
