A “major milestone” in the battle to eliminate polio globally has been reached, the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) has said.<\/p>\n
Its experts think a second of the three forms of poliovirus has been eliminated after mass vaccination campaigns.<\/p>\n
Wild poliovirus type 3 has not been detected for more than two years. Type 2 was eradicated in 1999.<\/p>\n
Experts said the world was “closer than ever” to defeating polio but the situation in Pakistan was worrying.<\/p>\n
Polio is highly infectious and causes paralysis in up to one in 200 people. Some children die when the muscles that help them breathe stop working.<\/p>\n
But there has been huge progress in eliminating the disease. Cases have fallen from 350,000 in 1988 to 416 in 2013.<\/p>\n
The last case of type 3 poliovirus was detected in Pakistan in November 2012, according to the CDC report.<\/p>\n
Endemic<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n “We may have eradicated a second of three; that’s a major milestone,” said Dr Stephen Cochi, a senior adviser at the CDC’s Centre for Global Health.<\/p>\n However, a formal process – involving the Polio Global Certification Commission – is required before type 3 can be officially declared eradicated. That will not take place for at least another year.<\/p>\n Type 1 remains endemic in three countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.<\/p>\n Dr Cochi told the BBC: “It’s the most prickly one. For reasons that are unclear, this is the most common cause of polio outbreaks and the most frequent cause of paralytic polio.”<\/p>\n There has been progress in Nigeria, where cases have fallen to six so far this year from 53 in 2013.<\/p>\n “But our biggest problem is getting worse in Pakistan,” said Dr Cochi.<\/p>\n Cases have leap from 59 last year to 236 and counting in 2014.<\/p>\n Mass exodus<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The Pakistani Taliban stopped polio vaccination programmes in some tribal areas of the country for about two years.<\/p>\n Since the summer there has been a mass exodus of people from the region after military operations by Pakistan’s army.<\/p>\n Dr Cochi added: “The good news is now those children are accessible in refugee camps or other parts of the country so they are getting vaccinated.<\/p>\n “But the bad news is the poliovirus has spread all over the country and there have been cases from Karachi and Punjab province.”<\/p>\n It means there is a serious risk of polio spreading to other countries. The virus travelled from Pakistan to Syria in 2013.<\/p>\n Prof Walt Orenstein, from the vaccine centre at Emory University in the US, told the BBC: “Type 3 appears to be gone – I think it is overwhelmingly likely that we are there, but it’s too soon to say we’re definitely there.<\/p>\n “So it’s not a total victory, but it is very promising.”<\/p>\n But he warned: “Pakistan is a major concern, about 85% of wild type 1 poliovirus this year has been in Pakistan, but in Nigeria there is real hope we can get rid of type 1 even by the end of this year.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A “major milestone” in the battle to eliminate polio globally has been reached, the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) has said. Its experts think a second of the three forms of poliovirus has been eliminated after mass vaccination campaigns. Wild poliovirus type 3 has not been detected for more than two years. Type 2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":41131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[15,38],"class_list":["post-65236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-chinese","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}