Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Topic: World Polio Day 2020

Why in News?

• October 24 is observed as World Polio Day every year in order to call on countries to stay vigilant in their fight against the disease.

About Polio Day

• The World Polio Day was established by Rotary International over a decade ago to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a vaccine against poliomyelitis.
• In the last three decades, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), led by national governments and the WHO, has been monitoring the disease situation globally.
• As per the CDC, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the last strongholds of the wild poliovirus. In Pakistan, the number of reported wild poliovirus cases has increased in 2020.
• Polio is a crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease. There is no cure, but there are safe and effective vaccines. Polio can be prevented through immunization.
• As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), since 1980, the cases of wild poliovirus have decreased by over 99.9 per cent as a result of vaccination efforts made around the world.

About Polio Disease

• Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus.
• The virus spreads from person to person and can infect a person’s spinal cord, causing paralysis (can’t move parts of the body).
• A smaller proportion of people with poliovirus infection will develop other, more serious symptoms that affect the brain and spinal cord:

• Paresthesia (feeling of pins and needles in the legs)
• Meningitis (infection of the covering of the spinal cord and/or brain) occurs in about 1 out of 25 people with poliovirus infection
• Paralysis (cannot move parts of the body) or weakness in the arms, legs, or both, occurs in about 1 out of 200 people with poliovirus infection

• Poliovirus is very contagious and spreads through person-to-person contact.
• It lives in an infected person’s throat and intestines.
• The virus can live in an infected person’s faeces for many weeks. It can contaminate food and water in unsanitary conditions.

India is Polio Free

• India was declared polio-free in January 2014, after three years of zero cases, an achievement widely believed to have been spurred by the successful pulse polio campaign in which all children were administered polio drops.
• The last case due to wild poliovirus in the country was detected on January 13, 2011.
• 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.

Resurgence of Polio

• In 2019, polio outbreaks were recorded in the Philippines, Malaysia, Ghana, Myanmar, China, Cameroon, Indonesia and Iran, which were mostly vaccine-derived (a rare strain of the virus genetically mutated from the strain in the vaccine.
• According to the WHO, if the oral vaccine-virus is excreted and allowed to circulate in a un- or underimmunised population for at least 12 months, it can mutate to cause infections.
• As per the CDC, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two countries that are the last stronghold of the wild poliovirus.
• In Pakistan, the number of reported wild poliovirus cases has increased in 2020.
• On August 25, the African Region was certified as wild poliovirus free.