Status: 02/18/2022 10:10 a.m
Africa has been officially free of polio since August 2020 – the last case was several years ago. But now, according to the WHO, the polio virus has been found in a child in Malawi.
The first polio infection on the African continent in more than five years has been detected in Malawi. The World Health Organization (WHO) said a case of wild poliovirus type 1 has been detected in an infant in the capital, Lilongwe. WHO is taking “urgent action to prevent the virus from spreading,” said WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti.
She expressed confidence that health authorities could “act swiftly and protect children from the debilitating effects of this disease” because of their experience with previous outbreaks and the high level of vigilance on the continent.
Africa has been considered polio-free since 2020
WHO said it is supporting Malawi with a risk assessment and response to the outbreak, including additional vaccinations. Vigilance has also been heightened in neighboring countries.
Laboratory analyzes have shown that the strain discovered is linked to a strain circulating in the Pakistani province of Sindh. “Because this is an imported case from Pakistan, this finding does not affect the wild poliovirus-free status of the African region,” the WHO said.
The WHO declared Africa free of wild indigenous polio in August 2020. There had been no cases of polio on the continent for the past four years, marking the threshold for the official declaration of eradication. Worldwide, polio is only considered endemic in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. According to the WHO, the last case of wild poliovirus in Africa was in Nigeria in 2016. There were only five cases worldwide last year.
Vaccination prevents spread
Poliomyelitis – the medical term for polio – is caused by an acutely contagious virus that attacks the spinal cord and can cause irreversible paralysis in children. Poliovirus is usually spread through an infected person’s feces and ingested through contaminated water or food. It multiplies in the gut.
While there is no cure for polio, vaccination prevents it from spreading. The disease was spread around the world until a vaccine was found in the 1950s. However, it would be decades before polio was pushed back worldwide. In 1996 there were more than 70,000 cases in Africa alone.