“Burundi has confirmed the presence of eight cases of poliovirus for the first time in thirty years”, said the Africa office of the World Health Organization (WHO). In a statement, the United Nations Public Health Agency said that “Cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2)” have been detected “in a four-year-old child from Isalé district, western Burundi, who had not been vaccinated once morest poliomyelitis, as well as in two other children who were contacts of the four-year-old boy”.
“A national public health emergency”
The text also specified that five samples “from wastewater environmental monitoring” also confirmed the presence of this poliovirus.
For the WHO, the Burundian government has detected the presence of the virus as “a national public health emergency” and plans to launch a polio vaccination campaign to protect all children between the ages of zero and seven once morest the virus. It is the most common form of polio in Africa with more than 400 cases of “acute flaccid paralysis” reported in 14 affected countries in 2022.
WHO-Africa states that “poliomyelitis is one of the causes of this type of paralysis, defined by the acute onset of weakness or paralysis with reduced muscle tone in children”, says WHO-Africa.
