Don’t lose focus on polio: Expert tells Bangladesh

With the global announcement that two of the three strains of wild polio virus have been eliminated, an expert of the commission that took the milestone decision has asked Bangladesh to remain vigilant.

“We should not lose our attention on polio,” Prof Mahmudur Rahman, who chaired the Southeast Asia team for the Global Certification Commission for Poliomyelitis Eradication, told bdnews24.com on Thursday.

He said they came to the conclusion on Oct 17 that Wild Polio Type 3 can be declared eradicated.

“It has not been seen anywhere in the world for the last seven years,” he said, adding that the announcement came on Thursday when they formally handed over the certificate to the director general of the WHO.

Earlier the Wild Polio Type 2 was declared eradicated in September 2015, Prof Rahman, who was also part of the commission that time, said.

Wild Polio Type 1 is still circulating only in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That means the world is not polio-free.

“Being a member of the Global Certification Commission for Poliomyelitis Eradication I am very happy to be one of the signatories to the certificate,” he said while sharing his feeling.

But the expert warned that despite being declared polio-free in 2014, Bangladesh cannot lose sight of the viral infection because “it can either be imported or can come from oral polio vaccines which we call vaccine-induced polio”.

To prevent vaccine-induced polio, Bangladesh has introduced injectable form or IPV and the national coverage of that vaccine has reached the desired level of 80 percent.

“But at the sub-national level we have some districts which are still at high risk,” he said, naming Joypurhat, Sunamganj, Rangamati, Meherpur, Chuadanga and Narail.

“We have to be careful because vaccine-induced polio is present in our region - in Myanmar and Indonesia. This is a threat,” Prof Rahman said.

“So the new announcement does not mean that we will stop our activities. We have to strengthen our activities to retain the polio-free status.”

“It will take time to make the world free of this scourge. So our routine immunisation and IPV coverage should be increased,” the expert said.

Injectable vaccine or IPV contains killed virus that cannot mutate while the oral vaccine contains weakened live virus that can mutate and later spread to the environment.