Around 1.5 lakh kids in UP, Maharashtra and Telangana have received polio vaccines (OPV) contaminated with poliovirus type 2. A strand that has been pronounced ‘eradicated’. The breach is serious. Poliomyelitis is a highly contagious viral disease that can maim, paralyze or even kill children. And now, poliovirus type 2 is back in the environment and there is a small possibility that the virus might cause polio—if not in a child who received the dose (a tiny but ever-present risk), then in the wider population of kids born after 2016 who have not been inoculated against polio type 2.
Warning: Critical
Polio vaccine breach: India is perched atop the edge of crisis
The government is rushing to vaccinate 150,000 kids who’ve received a contaminated polio vaccine. The breach exposes cracks in the global polio “endgame strategy”, created by a shortage of injectable vaccine
About 1.5 lakh kids in UP, Maharashtra and Telangana have received polio vaccines (OPV) contaminated with poliovirus type 2, a strand that had been eradicated
It raises a low possibility of a child getting infected with poliovirus. But it makes India’s need to shift to IPV urgent
But when the GoI floated a tender earlier this year to procure IPV, it got only one response, and not a promising one
Can the government shift polio immunisation programme from OPV dependence to IPV?
