Mozambique Identified First Case Of Wild Poliovirus Type 1:
Mozambique has identified its first case of wild poliovirus Type 1 this week 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.
- An outbreak was reported in Malawi earlier this year.
- As of today, wild poliovirus is endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
- The World Health Organization (WHO) defines polio or poliomyelitis as “a highly infectious viral disease, which mainly affects young children.”
- 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.
- There are three variants of the poliovirus, numbered 1 to 3.
- 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, an achievement that is widely believed to have been spurred by the successful Pulse Polio campaign.
