After an outbreak of vaccine polio (child paralysis) in Jerusalem, Israel is trying to stop the spread of the disease with a vaccination campaign. So far, around 20,000 people have been vaccinated, the Ministry of Health announced on Monday evening. The campaign was launched following vaccine polio was discovered in a four-year-old child in Jerusalem in early March.
The child was not vaccinated and had been infected by someone else’s live polio vaccine. Six such cases are now known, at least one of them with symptoms. All those affected were unvaccinated.
The Ministry of Health is also examining the sewage nationwide for polio viruses. Corresponding finds had already been made in several cities, it said.
Israel has been vaccinating once morest the polio virus once more with the live vaccine since 2013, and in a combination with the inactivated vaccine since 2014. The authorities had discovered wild polioviruses in sewage in the south of the country in 2013. The live vaccine is considered more effective than the inactivated vaccine, but carries the risk of infection for unvaccinated people with poliovirus excreted by vaccinated people.
Contagious
Israel began vaccination once morest the polio virus in 1957. According to the Department of Health, the last documented case of wild polio was in 1988.
Polio – also known as polio – is a contagious infectious disease that can cause paralysis and death. Permanent paralysis can occur, especially in young children. The highly contagious virus is often spread through contaminated water. So far there is no cure for polio.
A wild polio case was discovered in Malawi in early March, the first in Africa in years. By then, all countries except Afghanistan and Pakistan had officially eliminated wild polio.
