Polio Outbreak Concerns Rise as Virus Detected in Pakistan’s Environment

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ISLAMABAD, May 9: Four environmental samples in Pakistan have tested positive for wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1), the country’s National Institute of Health (NIH) said on Thursday. The virus has been detected in sewage samples taken from three cities in the country, raising the tally of this year’s environmental samples to 116, the regional reference laboratory for polio eradication at the NIH said in a statement. The statement added that the samples have been collected from Karachi and Jamshoro cities in the southern Sindh province and Hub in the southwestern Balochistan province.

The samples were genetically linked to the imported YB3A cluster of WPV1, the statement said, adding that the virus has been found in sewage samples of 34 districts of the South Asian country this year so far. A day earlier, the virus was detected in two cities of the country including Karachi. All positive samples and two human cases reported this year contain YB3A cluster, and it is a threat to every child, particularly children below 5 years old, who could get a lifelong physical disability from it, the statement added. The country’s health ministry said in an earlier statement that an integrated strategy has been formulated in high-risk areas of polio, and that the parents must get the polio vaccine administered to their children during every polio immunization campaign to defeat the disease in the country. (Xinhua)

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