Mozambique announced today that there is an outbreak of polio in its territory, after the virus was detected in a child living in the northeastern province of Tete. This is the first case of the disease in the country in almost three decades, pointed out the World Health Organization (WHO).
The second imported case of wild polio in South Africa This year, after locating another in Malawi in February, it concerns a child who began to show symptoms of paralysis in late March, the WHO noted.
“The discovery of another outbreak of wild-type polio in Africa is a matter of great concern (…).
The polio virus enters the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within a few hours. It can not be cured, but the infection can be prevented through vaccination. THE dramatic decline in cases worldwide in recent decades due to intensive national and international child and infant vaccination campaigns.
The case of Malawi has caused concern because in 2020 Africa was declared free of the “wild” type of polio virus, which remains endemic in only two countries worldwide: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan completed January 2022 a year without any cases of the disease.
According to the genetic test carried out in the case of Mozambique, this seems to be related to the strain of the polio virus that was circulating in the province of Sindh in Pakistan in 2019 and which was also detected in Malawi.
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