Mozambique confirms first wild poliovirus case in 30 years

Context

Mozambique identified its first case of wild poliovirus Type 1 after a child contracted the disease.

It is the country’s first such case since 1992 and the second imported case of wild poliovirus in Southern Africa this year.

Polio is a crippling and potentially deadly disease that affects the nervous system.
The virus is transmitted by person-to-person, spread mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (e.g. contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine, from where it can invade the nervous system and can cause paralysis.

Once that happens, the patient is crippled for life because there is no treatment for the affliction.
Polio infection, however, is easily preventable by a vaccine.

Polio may be fatal if the muscles used for breathing are paralysed or if there is an infection of the brain.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines polio or poliomyelitis as “a highly infectious viral disease, which mainly affects young children.”

Symptomatically, all three strains are identical, in that they cause irreversible paralysis or even death.

For a country to be declared polio-free, the wild transmission of all three kinds has to be stopped.
For eradication, cases of both wild and vaccine-derived polio infection have to be reduced to zero.

India was declared polio-free in January 2014, after three years of zero cases.
The last case due to wild poliovirus in the country was detected on January 13, 2011.
The WHO on February 24, 2012, removed India from the list of countries with active endemic wild poliovirus transmission.
India launched the Pulse Polio immunisation programme in 1995, after a resolution for a global initiative of polio eradication was adopted by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 1988.
To prevent the virus from coming to India, the government has since March 2014 made the Oral Polio Vaccination (OPV) mandatory for those travelling between India and polio-affected countries, such as Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Syria and Cameroon.