It is sobering to look back and recall that three decades ago tens of thousands of children in this country, many of them infants, were being crippled, even killed, by polio each year. The fight to vaccinate and protect our little ones from this dreadful condition has been long and hard; mistakes have been made, and lessons learnt. No Indian child was recorded as having fallen victim to the disease in the past year. Surveillance laboratories are carefully testing stool samples from children as well as sewage, making sure that naturally occurring wild forms of the polio-causing virus are not circulating. Once that has been ascertained, India will be taken off the list of endemic countries. Currently, there are four countries in the list collectively known by the acronym PAIN (Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Nigeria). Read full article
National Polio Surveillance Project
The goal of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is to ensure that no child will ever again know the crippling effects of polio. Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus poliovirus. It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. It can strike at any age, but affects mainly children under three. Polio is mainly passed through person-to-person (i.e., fecal-oral) contact, and infects persons who do not have immunity against the disease. There is no cure for polio, but the disease can be prevented by immunization with polio vaccine. Oral polio vaccine (OPV) was developed in 1961 by Dr Albert Sabin; OPV is a highly effective, safe and inexpensive vaccine, and has been used in all countries of the world to achieve polio eradication.
Along with all 192 member nations of the World Health Organization, the Government of India in 1988 committed the nation to the goal of global polio eradication. Since 1995, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India has been conducting intensive immunization and surveillance activities aimed at the complete elimination of poliovirus and paralytic polio. The National Polio Surveillance Project, which was launched in 1997, provides technical and logistic assistance to the GoI, and works closely with state governments and a broad array of partner agencies to achieve the goal of polio eradication in India.
Inactivated polio vaccine (IPV)
IPV is produced from wild-type poliovirus strains of each serotype that have been inactivated (killed) with formalin. As an injectable vaccine, it can be administered alone or in combination with other vaccines (e.g., diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, and haemophilus influenza).
Oral polio vaccine (OPV)
Oral polio vaccine (OPV) is a live-attenuated vaccine, produced by the passage of the virus through non-human cells at a sub-physiological temperature, which produces spontaneous mutations in the viral genome. An attenuated vaccine is a vaccine created by reducing the virulence of a pathogen, but still keeping it viable (or "live").[1] Attenuation takes an infectious agent and alters it so that it becomes harmless or less virulent. These vaccines contrast to those produced by "killing" the virus (inactivated vaccine).
Add to your Vocabulary
Sobering : Make or become more serious, sensible, and solemn, tending to make one thoughtful. Eg : A sobering thought.
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