The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that authorities in Malawi have detected a case of polio in the southern African country’s capital and the deadly strain has been imported from Pakistan’s Sindh province.
It is well known that Pakistan still has polio, a disease that has been eradicated from almost all over the world, and now this possible outbreak is a massive setback in eradicating the highly infectious paralytic disease globally.
“As an imported case from Pakistan, this detection does not affect the African region’s wild poliovirus-free certification status,” the WHO said.
“As long as wild polio exists anywhere in the world all countries remain at risk of importation of the virus,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s Africa chief.
“Detection of WPV1 outside the world’s two remaining endemic countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a serious concern and underscores the importance of prioritising polio immunisation activities,” the Global Polio Eradication Initiative said.
In a statement on Friday, the UN health agency said officials had identified wild poliovirus disease in a young child in Lilongwe, and this is the first case of this wild virus detected on the African continent in five years.
Polio is not uncommon in many African African countries, however, those outbreaks were linked to viruses originally contained in vaccines, not to the wild virus.
However, the live virus in the oral polio vaccine can mutate into a version capable of causing epidemics, particularly in populations that haven’t been immunized.
“The last case of wild poliovirus in Africa was identified in northern Nigeria in 2016 and globally there were only five cases in 2021. Any case of wild poliovirus is a significant event and we will mobilize all resources to support the country’s response,” said Dr Modjirom Ndoutabe, Polio Coordinator in the WHO Regional Office for Africa.
The Pakistan government has suspended the anti-polio drive in the past following the growing number of attacks on polio workers in different parts of the country.
Attempts to eradicate the crippling disease In Pakistan have been seriously hampered by deadly targeting of vaccination teams in recent years by Islamic militants, who oppose the drives, claiming that the polio drops cause infertility.
Polio spreads mostly from person to person or through contaminated water and attacks the nervous system and can sometimes paralyse people within hours and it is particularly dangerous to children under five.
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