Is polio making a comeback?
Just when health authorities were becoming optimistic that polio was being eradicated around the world, it has started to make a resurgence.
Need to know:
Polio has been in the news in 2022 with a resurgence of the disease in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, international conflicts and natural disasters.
Cases of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) were confined to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2021, but unfortunately in February 2022, only 18 months after Africa was declared free of indigenous wild poliovirus, cases of imported WPV1 were reported in children in Malawi and Mozambique.1
In Pakistan, where 20 cases of WPV1 were reported in 2022, the situation for polio vaccination programs has been made very difficult by the devastating floods. The better news was in Afghanistan where only two cases of WPV1 had been reported to November 2022.2
