Polio Vaccines Deployed to Stop Outbreaks

With 117 confirmed cases of circulating variant polioviruses in the WHO African Region this year, the Africa Regional Certification Commission recently urged countries to urgently address gaps in polio immunity to avert future outbreaks.

In recent years, polioviruses have paralyzed hundreds of African children, says the WHO.

On July 28, 2023, the WHO announced the detection of a circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) in two acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) cases and two asymptomatic healthy children community contacts from the Hagadera camp in Kenya. 

The U.S. NIH says AFP surveillance is the standard for detecting cases of poliomyelitis in anyone under 15 years of age.

On July 25, 2023, Madagascar launched polio vaccinations for nearly 18 million children, adolescents, and adults in the priority regions of Analamanga, Vakinankaratra, and Alaotra Mangoro. Madagascar has reported 79 cases of cVDPV1 in 2023. Forty-five of them were cases of AFP, including 198 environmental samples.

On July 4, 2023, the Ministry of Health of the United Republic of Tanzania notified the WHO of the detection of cVDPV2. The virus was isolated from an AFP case in the Rukwa region, southwestern Tanzania.

To alert international travelers, the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) included various African countries in its Global Polio Travel Health Advisory on July 10, 2023.

Furthermore, the U.S. was added to about thirty countries where polio was recently identified. In the U.S., poliovirus was confirmed in 2022 and 2023 in wastewater samples.

The CDC recommends polio vaccinations before visiting outbreak areas.