- The Burundian authorities declared the viral identification a national public health emergency.
- Infections were verified in an unvaccinated four-year-old kid.
- Burundi aims to begin a polio vaccine campaign for all eligible children aged up to 7 years.
The World Health Organization and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative reported incidences of vaccine-derived poliovirus in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
According to the WHO, the Burundian authorities declared the viral identification a national public health emergency after infections were verified in an unvaccinated four-year-old kid in the Isale district of western Burundi, as well as two other children who were his contacts.
The presence of circulating poliovirus type 2 was confirmed in five additional samples from environmental surveillance of wastewater in Burundi, according to the WHO.
Circulating poliovirus type 2 differs from wild poliovirus in that infections arise when a weakened strain of poliovirus contained in the oral polio vaccination circulates for long periods of time among under-immunized populations.
The findings are significant because they are the first to be connected to the administration of a new vaccination, the novel oral poliomyelitis vaccine type 2 (nOPV2), which was created expressly to lower this risk.
According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 was discovered in six children in the DRC’s eastern Tanganyika and South Kivu provinces.
Burundi aims to begin a polio vaccine campaign for all eligible children aged up to 7 years in the next weeks, with assistance from the WHO and GPEI, according to the WHO.
“While detection of these outbreaks is a tragedy for the family and communities affected, it is not unexpected with wider use of the vaccine,” said the GPEI, a partnership made up of the WHO, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other global health bodies.
It stated that 600 million doses of the new vaccine had been provided in 28 countries since March 2021, and that the vaccination was both safe and effective.
According to the GPEI, the DRC has scheduled a vaccine programme for April.
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