Global polio immunisation suspended amid coronavirus pandemic

PARIS(AFP): The global polio eradication campaigns have been suspended for the first time in three decades amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has announced that its health workers cannot continue their immunisation drives — and warned this risks a resurgence of the poliovirus. The decision came after the coronavirus swiftly spread across the world and nations imposed strict travel restrictions to slow its spread.

The World Health Organisation’s Michel Zaffran, who heads GPEI said, “The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt an unprecedented blow to the world’s battle against polio.”

“We’re devastated by the fact that we have to stop the activities for a disease that we were working so hard to eradicate,” he added.

An announcement last week by GPEI said it would halt immunisations until at least June, but Zaffran said that it was impossible to predict when they will resume, with decisions likely made on a country-by-country basis.

There are only two nations remaining where the poliovirus continues to spread — Pakistan and Afghanistan — but a strain that has mutated from the vaccine itself has also caused outbreaks in several nations in Africa.

Zaffran said the group was “extremely concerned” that the poliovirus could now start to advance again within Afghanistan and Pakistan and warned that in Africa it could cross borders into countries currently unaffected.

Immunisation campaigns protect against both wild and vaccine-derived outbreaks of the virus, which spreads in areas of poor sanitation and contaminated water and can cause irreversible paralysis. Children under five are particularly vulnerable.