POLIO

March 10, 2019

President Ram Nath Kovind launched the Pulse Polio programme for 2019. More than 17 crore children of less than five years across the country will be given polio drops as part of the drive to sustain polio eradication from the country.

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.