The polio cases that we are confronted with today have nothing to do with a wild poliovirus,” said Health Secretary Francisco Duque III at the 40th anniversary of Rotary Club’s “End Polio Now” campaign.
Duque explained: “It has something to do with this vaccine-derived polio. However, this vaccine-derived poliovirus has begun to mutate and has begun to reassume the virulence of the wild poliovirus.”
A vaccine-derived poliovirus is a strain of the weakened poliovirus that was initially included in the oral polio vaccine. Over time, the virus has changed and behaves more like the wild or naturally occurring virus.
This means that the virus can now spread more easily to someone who is unvaccinated against polio, who comes into contact with the feces or respiratory secretions, like from a sneeze of an infected person.
This poses a new challenge to the government and private organizations like the Rotary Club, who are now on full throttle in their campaign to end polio.
“But there is nothing difficult as long as people work together. We will be able to overcome this. Hopefully, with a lot of impatience, we will be able to tackle this problem,” Duque quipped.
Paralysis
The poliovirus may cause illness, including paralysis. The virus usually enters the environment through the stool of an infected person.
Areas with poor sanitation are especially vulnerable as the virus can readily spread from feces into the water supply or food by touch. Direct contact with an infected person can cause polio.
Although polio can cause paralysis and even death, the majority of infected people do not get sick and are not aware they’ve been infected.
Infected patients can pass on the virus for seven to 10 days before the onset of disease. They can also continue to shed the virus in their stool for three to six weeks.
There is no cure yet for polio.
According to the World Health Organization website, poliovirus can be “easily imported into a polio-free country and can spread rapidly among unimmunized populations. Failure to eradicate polio could result in as many as 200,000 new cases every year, within 10 years, all over the world.”
Traveling abroad
Duque said Filipinos planning to travel abroad must check first if the country they want to visit requires them to produce polio vaccination papers. The list of countries that need Filipinos to bring immunization papers is posted on the Department of Health (DOH) website.
“We know our work is never done and we continue to pool our efforts, our time and our resources together because fighting this particular disease and so many others necessitate continuing efforts,” said Rotary Club Manila president Vicente “Bimbo” Mills.
The Rotary Club administered the first polio vaccine in the country 40 years ago. To date, Rotary Club members have donated more than $2 billion and shielded more than 2.5 billion children from poliovirus.
A commemorative memorandum of understanding between the Rotary and DOH officials was signed, an oral polio vaccination program for children from Guadalupe Viejo carried out, and a formal program held to celebrate this historic event.
Aside from polio vaccination, Duque said the government is also strengthening its surveillance of acute flaccid paralysis cases, environmental surveillance and intensifying the zero open defecation program.
“These measures are critical to ascertain that we can mitigate, if not completely halt, the spread of the poliovirus from one vulnerable person to another,” Duque said.
Duque said polio eradication is the DOH’s longstanding and most significant effort.