The World Health Organization has reported that the strain of poliovirus now spreading in Sudan is linked to a vaccine-derived poliovirus that has circulated in neighboring Chad since last year.
The WHO issued a statement earlier this month stating that it was notified by Sudan’s Federal Ministry of Health on Aug. 9 that a vaccine-derived poliovirus was circulating in the African nation.
In the first Sudan case, a 48-month-old child from Sulbi city in western Sudan showed symptoms of paralysis in March of 2020. In the second case, a 3-year-old from the eastern part of the country showed paralysis symptoms in early April.
Both children received their last bivalent oral poliovirus vaccine in 2019. Some 13 circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 cases have been reported in Sudan between Aug. 9 and Aug. 26. According to the WHO, the risk that the virus will spread to central Africa and the Horn of Africa is high, and the same vaccine-derived strain of the virus is circulating in Cameroon.
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Experts say several cases of polio go unreported for each reported case. The virus is highly contagious, most often afflicting children under age 5, and can cause death and paralysis.
Africa had just been declared free of wild polio by the United Nations Late. 25 after years of vaccine drives, with some campaigns seeking to vaccinate upward of 90 percent of children.
The oral polio vaccine is made of a weakened form of the virus that is intended to cause the body to produce antibodies and establish immunity. However, in rare cases the virus may survive in the body without causing the disease. When this happens the virus can spread, mutating along the way, and an eventual mutation of the original weakened form of the virus can infect an unvaccinated person to become as dangerous as wild polio.
Source: WHO Says New Polio Outbreak In Sudan Linked to Oral Vaccine
