About:
- Poliomyelitis (Polio) is a highly infectious viral disease, mainly affecting children.
- The virus is transmitted from person-to-person, mainly through the faecal-oral route.
- The poliovirus invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis.
- There is no cure for polio, only treatment to alleviate the symptoms. Polio can be prevented through immunization.
- Strains: There are three types of polio virus strains – P1, P2 and P3. P2 was eradicated globally in 1999. The last case due to type-2 wild poliovirus globally was reported from Aligarh in India in 1999.
Vaccine: There are six different vaccines to stop polio transmission –
- Inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) – protects against poliovirus types 1, 2, and 3.
- Trivalent oral polio vaccine (tOPV) – protects against poliovirus types 1, 2, and 3 - following the "OPV Switch" in April 2016, tOPV is no longer in use.
- Bivalent oral polio vaccine (bOPV) – protects against poliovirus types 1, and 3.
- Monovalent oral polio vaccines (mOPV1, mOPV2 and mOPV3) – protect against each individual type of poliovirus, respectively.
