New Delhi: A two-and-a-half-year-old toddler from West Garo district in Meghalaya has been diagnosed with poliomyelitis or polio. The Union government says it’s a case of vaccine-derived polio in an immuno-deficient child (iVDPV), reigniting demands for India to switch to the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) rather than the oral polio vaccine (OPV). While polio was eradicated from India in 2011, VDPV — when an individual, mostly children, develops polio after exposure to the weakened poliovirus present in the OPV — has been reported in rare cases.
While highly effective, the OPV can cause vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) at a rate of approximately 1 in 2.7 million doses. “The World Health Organisation (WHO) will soon prepare a detailed report on the polio case confirmed in Meghalaya,” the Union health ministry said this week in response to a query by ThePrint.
Also Read: India may soon get 1st dengue vaccine, but wait for jab effective against all 4 strains could be longer Typically, a healthy person clears a poliovirus infection within 6 weeks. However, those with primary immunodeficiency (PID), an immune system that does not work properly, who cannot mount an adequate immune response, may have a persistent infection in the intestines, where the poliovirus replicates, and prolonged viral shedding in their faeces. Cases of iVDPV are generally detected through surveillance for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) — the sudden onset of weakness or paralysis.