Wild Polio Wiped Out In Africa — But Vaccine-Derived Polio Persists : Goats and Soda : NPR / Doreen Lobo

Africa Declares Wild Polio Is Wiped Out — Yet It Persists In Vaccine-Derived Cases

By
Maria Godoy
npr.org
3 min
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In a historic public health achievement, the 47 nations of the World Health Organization's Africa region were certified to be free of wild poliovirus on Tuesday.

The declaration comes four years after the continent reported its last case of wild poliovirus, in Nigeria, and 24 years after it launched an ambitious eradication campaign.

But the region's fight against polio isn't over — vaccine-derived polio still poses a threat.

And there's another type of polio that's problematic. Sixteen African nations are currently battling outbreaks of what's called "vaccine-derived polio." This is a form of polio that stems from the oral polio vaccine used in lower income countries because it is cheap and easy to administer.

The oral vaccine contains a live but weakened version of the polio virus. The virus replicates inside the child's intestine and eventually is excreted. In places with poor sanitation, fecal matter can enter the drinking water supply and the virus is able to start spreading from person to person.

Henrietta Fore, executive director of UNICEF, called COVID-19 a "global health emergency that not only threatens people's lives, it threatens to interrupt our work to deliver the polio vaccine and so many other lifesaving interventions in Africa."

Fore and others noted that in some African nations, the same health networks developed to eradicate wild polio are now being used to help support the response to the pandemic. "Together," Fore said, "let's reveal once again the power of African unity to gather people around a common cause."