Polio continues to remain a public health emergency
With the continued risk of international spread, WHO has announced that polio will remain a public health emergency for three more months. Polio was declared as public health emergency of…
Category: Vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV)
Focus must be on reducing vaccine-associated polio cases
Now that wild poliovirus type 3 has been officially declared as eliminated, the only way to reduce the risk of vaccine-associated polio cases is by switching over to oral vaccine…
India eradicated wild polio virus but at what cost
Despite oral polio vaccine causing vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) and vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) cases, India did not switch over from OPV to inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). While circulating VDPV strains…
Polio outbreaks in Congo raise global concern
The polio endgame is proving to be much more challenging with 28 children becoming paralysed by the circulating type 2 vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPVs) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has…
Number of wild poliovirus cases drop in Pakistan, Afghanistan
In the last six months, there have been only eight wild-type poliovirus (type 1 and type 3) cases reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan, down from 32 cases during the same…
Top health stories of 2016
On the health front, the year 2016 witnessed a few setbacks and but also a few positive developments. Here are the most important health developments of 2016 1. Trial results…
When the media created the ‘wild’ type-2 polio virus
The last case of wild type-2 poliovirus was seen in West Bengal way back in 1999. Since then no child in the world has been stuck by wild type-2 poliovirus…
Global ‘switch’ to reduce vaccine-derived polio cases
Beginning Monday, April 25, India will stop using the oral polio vaccine (OPV) with all three strains of the poliovirus (type 1, type 2 and type 3) and instead use…
