Doctors rule out threat of polio, say Karnataka can breathe easy

Recent reports of a polio virus strain being found in Hyderabad may have raised concerns but doctors working with the World Health Organization's polio radication programme in India have said there's no need to panic.

India continues to be poliofree. Though Telangana will organize a special vaccination drive as a precautionary measure, no such activity will be undertaken in Karnataka. “We continue to be polio-free.There is no cause for alarm,“ said Dr BP Subramanya, surveillance medical officer with Polio Surveillance Project-India, WHO.Just a month ago, WHO had declared that the Polio 2 or P2 virus strain is no more a threat.

Polio can be caused by three viral strains: P1, P2 and P3. Not a single polio case has been caused by the P2 strain since 1999, prompting the decision to switch from the trivalent to bivalent vaccine, which will immunize a child against any infection of the P1 and P3 strains.

“The detected strain is vaccine derived poliovirus (VDPV), which was discovered in a sewage sample collected near the Secunderabad railway station. However, no children have been found to be affected by it in the area. The last case of Wild Polio Virus Type 2 was reported 17 years ago in 1999.The detection of (VPDV) doesn't change our polio-free status. It only indicates the robustness of the surveillance system and willingness of the country to detect any kind of polio virus even from the environment (sewage),“ the Government of India said in a press release on Thursday .

“The occurrence of VDPV is not rare. It can affect populations with low immunity. It's good that we have stopped using P2 vaccination,“ said Dr Subramanaya.