World Polio Day, established by Rotary International over a decade ago, is held on October 24th in celebration of the birth of Dr. Jonas Salk, the man who led the first team to develop a vaccine against polio. This day aims to raise awareness on polio and celebrate the progress that has been made on the road to polio eradication.
Key facts about Polio
- Polio is a viral infection which is contagious in nature and in most severe cases causes difficulty in breathing and irreversible paralysis.
- It is caused by a wild polio virus.
- The virus is transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (e.g. contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine.
- It mainly affects children under 5 years of age.
- Polio can only be prevented as it has no cure. Polio vaccine with scheduled doses can protect a child for lifetime.
Some interesting facts that you didn’t know:
- In 1985, Rotary launched the programme with an objective to end polio. At that time about 125 countries were affected with about 3,50,000 children crippled
- Since 1985, there has been a 99.9 per cent reduction in the polio cases
- The countries that are still affected are Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Since past one year, Nigeria hasn’t reported a case and if it continues to progress then Nigeria would be declared a polio-free nation
- In India, the last case of polio was reported in January 2011
- In 2012, India was struck off the list of polio endemic countries and later in 2014, India along with other countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia, Maldives, Nepal etc. was announced polio-free
- Polio is one of the two major diseases which are a subject to global eradication. The other disease is Guinea worm disease
Prevention of Polio
As there is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented through immunization. Polio vaccine is given multiple times to protects a child for the lifetime. There are two types of vaccine that can protect against polio-Inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) and oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV). Oral vaccine is given orally and the inactivated poliovirus vaccine is injected in leg or arm depending on the patient’s age.
Dose of Polio Vaccine
OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine)requires a total of 5 doses; 1st dose at birth, three primary doses at 6,10 and 14 weeks and one booster dose at 16-24 months of age. A new introduction in the year 2016 is Injectable Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) which is given as an additional dose along with 3rd dose of OPV.
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