Although India was removed from the list of polio endemic countries in January 2012, maintaining the focus on polio vaccination is critically important to prevent reintroduction of the virus. In 2009-2010, we conducted a study to assess the attitudes and practices of frontline health workers in India regarding polio immunization in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. More than 95% of auxiliary nurse midwi...

OBJECTIVE Virologic surveillance of poliomyelitis to monitor the transmission of wild polio virus in the community. STUDY AREA All major hospitals of Delhi and surrounding area. METHODS Stool samples were collected from 1221 cases of acute flaccid paralysis during 1992-1994 and were subjected to virus isolation on RD and HEp2 cell line. Viruses isolated were analyzed further by microneutral...

Since 1994, as part of the global eradication of poliomyelitis, the Australian National Polio Reference Laboratory (NPRL) at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) has been responsible for virological testing to confirm the absence of poliomyelitis in Australia. Samples from patients with acute flaccid paralysis are transported to VIDRL for viral culture. Polio and enter...

BACKGROUND Vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) and immunodeficient long-term polio excretors constitute a significant public health burden and are a major concern for the WHO global polio eradication endgame. CASE PRESENTATION Poliovirus type 3 characterized as Sabin-like was isolated from a 5-month-old Albanian child with X-linked agammaglobulinemia and VAPP after oral polio va...

INTRODUCTION Poliomyelitis remains a global threat despite availability of oral polio vaccine (OPV), proven to reduce the burden of the paralyzing disease. In Nigeria, children continue to miss the opportunity to be fully vaccinated, owing to factors such as unmet health needs and low uptake in security-compromised and underserved communities. We describe the implementation and evaluation of se...

BACKGROUND In 1988 the World Health Assembly adopted the goal to eradicate poliomyelitis by routine immunization using Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV). On 21 June 2002 the WHO European Region was declared polio-free. In 2008 poliomyelitis is still endemic in 4 countries (Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), where 1201 new cases were registered in 2007; 107 sporadic cases were also notified in c...

E356 CMAJ, April 19, 2011, 183(7) © 2011 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors Fifty years ago a team of doctors and nurses from the Nova Scotia Department of Health and Dalhousie University conducted what became known as the Wedgeport Polio Trial in which the oral trivalent Sabin vaccine was administered to an entire community in Southwest Nova Scotia. The results of the trial were pub...

BACKGROUND The government of India launched the pulse polio immunization (PPI) programme in 1995 with the aim of eradicating poliomyelitis by the end of 2000. Despite this, 733 children with polio were reported in 2009 alone. Therefore, there is a need to understand the reason underlying such high numbers of cases after so many years of programme implementation. This study was performed to asse...

Polio vaccine is targeted towards preventing poliomyelitis; a condition characterized by inflammation of the spinal cord and neighboring structures resulting to paralysis of the limbs and organs and possibly becoming handicapped for life. Nigeria is one of the three countries where poliomyelitis is still endemic (WHO, 2009). As part of the immunization schedule in Nigeria towards the fight agai...