25/01/2020 - Health | Mainstorming

Shivangi 5 years

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IAS Parliament 5 years

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IAS Parliament 5 years

KEY POINTS

· In 2019, the Ministry of Health in Malaysia announced the country’s first case of polio since 1992. The Philippines had declared an outbreak of polio.

· The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that tests have confirmed that the virus is genetically linked to poliovirus circulating in the Philippines.

Where does India stand?

· In January 2014, India was declared polio-free after three years on zero cases, an achievement that is widely believed to have been spurred by the successful pulse polio campaign in which all children were administered polio drops.

· In fact, lessons from the programme were later incorporated in Mission Indradhanush to bump up India’s immunisation campaign, and with great success.

· In 2018, there was a brief scare when some vials of the polio vaccine were found contaminated with the polio 2 virus that had been eradicated from the country in 1999.

· However, WHO quickly issued a statement saying that all vaccines used in the government programme in India were safe.

· The last case due to wild poliovirus in the country was detected on January 13, 2011.

What do multiple outbreaks in the vicinity mean for India?

· India introduced the injectable polio vaccine in the Universal Immunisation Programme. This was to reduce chances of vaccine-derived polio infection, which continues to happen in the country.

· If both wild and vaccine-derived polio infection are reduced to zero, it would mean there is no trace left of the virus anywhere in the world, except in controlled situations in laboratories for future contingencies.