Health chiefs announce the second of three strains of polio has been eradicated four years after the first was wiped out
- Wild polio virus type 3 (WPV3) officially wiped out after no new cases since 2012
- Comes four years after wild polio virus type 2 (WPV2) was eradicated in 2015
- Type 1 is still circulating and infecting in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan
The fight to eradicate polio has been given a major boost as a second strain of the virus has been wiped out, health officials have announced.
Wild polio virus type 3, also known as WPV3, is now the third human disease-causing pathogen to be eradicated worldwide in history.
It comes after wild polio virus type 2 (WPV2) was declared wiped out in 2015 and smallpox in 1980.
Polio spreads in vulnerable populations in areas where there is no immunity and sanitation is poor.
The incurable virus invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours. Infection can be prevented by vaccination.
An Indian child receives polio vaccine drops on National Immunisation Day in Guwahati in March
A dramatic reduction in case numbers worldwide in recent decades has been largely due to intense national and regional immunisation campaigns in children.
The last case of polio type 3 was detected in northern Nigeria in 2012, and global health officials have since been conducting intense surveillance to ensure it has gone.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) said in a statement today: ‘With no wild poliovirus type 3 detected anywhere in the world since 2012, the Global Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication is anticipated to officially declare this strain as globally eradicated.’
The success in ending type 3 means that only type 1 of the wild virus is still circulating and causing infections.
Polio type 1 is endemic in two countries – Afghanistan and Pakistan – but efforts to wipe it out have faced setbacks in the past two years.
After reaching a historic low of only 22 cases of wild polio infection in 2017, the virus has caused 72 cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan already this year.
The first target date for ending polio was set in 1988 by the GPEI, a partnership of the World Health Organization (WHO), the health charity Rotary International and others, which had aimed to eradicate it by 2000.
GPEI said, however, that this week’s declaration of the end of WPV3 was a ‘significant milestone’.
Carol Pandak, director of Rotary’s PolioPlus program, said it proves that a polio-free world is achievable.
‘Even as the polio program addresses major challenges, we’re making important headway in other areas,’ she said.
The most recent outbreak of polio occurred in the Philippines in September, nearly two decades after it was declared free of the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said that authorities have confirmed at least one case of polio in a three-year-old girl in southern Lanao del Sur province.
They have also detected the polio virus in sewage in Manila and in waterways in the southern Davao region.
Those findings are enough to declare an outbreak of the crippling disease in a previously polio-free country like the Philippines, he said.
The World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund expressed deep concern over polio’s reemergence in the country.