LAHORE: The second case of wild poliovirus in Lahore was confirmed posthumously on Saturday, taking the number of polio cases to six in Punjab this year.
The National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad, on Saturday, issued the report of confirmation of wild poliovirus in a 14-year-old boy who had expired in the Mayo Hospital on July 27, 2020. Earlier, a 26-month-old child was also posthumously confirmed wild poliovirus positive by the NIH on July 14 after the child had expired in the Children’s Hospital on July 10, 2020.
The two expired children belonged to the same region of Ravi Town in Lahore. This is the third child in Punjab, who has died of the crippling virus. Earlier, two children aged 26 and six months died of wild poliovirus in Lahore and Dera Ghazi Khan this year. “The wild poliovirus has been confirmed in a child aged 166 months in Ravi Town of Lahore,” confirmed the Punjab Polio Programme in a statement on Saturday.
Sources said the 14-year-old boy suffered paralysis on his both legs and both arms before expiry in the Mayo Hospital on July 27, 2020. However, the spokesman of the Punjab Polio Programme informed that the boy’s stool samples could not be collected because he had expired on July 27. But, he said, the NIH laboratory confirmed on Saturday that the boy had wild poliovirus after examining stool samples of a contact located in a neighbouring house.
This is the second WPV case in Lahore this year and sixth in Punjab, while the total number of polio cases in Pakistan stands at 65. The Punjab Polio Programme says the polio campaigns have remained suspended for three months due to COVID-19, resulting in intense virus circulation in Punjab. “As a response, anti-polio campaigns have been restarted to save more children from the virus,” said Sundas Irshad, incharge of Punjab Polio Programme. She said the monthly campaigns are aimed to ensure elimination of wild poliovirus this year, and urged parents to vaccinate their children in the upcoming campaigns so that no more children remain vulnerable.
More than 30 million children, including nearly 18 million in Punjab alone, are deprived of polio vaccines across Pakistan due to the cessation of anti-polio activities in late March due to the coronavirus pandemic. According to experts, the polio is a highly infectious disease caused by wild poliovirus, mostly affecting children under the age of five, which invades the nervous system and causes paralysis or even death.
With the detection of a new case in Punjab, the total number of wild poliovirus cases in the country has reached 65 in the current year. As many as 22 cases have been reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 21 in Sindh, 16 in Balochistan and six in Punjab.
Previously, a total of two wild poliovirus cases were confirmed in Punjab among overall 54 cases in 2015; no case was reported in Punjab among a total of 20 cases in 2016; one case was confirmed in Punjab among overall 8 cases in the country in 2017; none was reported in Punjab among 12 cases confirmed in 2018; and 12 cases were reported in Punjab among 147 cases confirmed in the country in 2019.
To add to this, 54 cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type-2 (cVDPV2) were confirmed across Pakistan in 2020 so far including 42 cases in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, seven cases in Punjab, four in Sindh and one case in Balochistan. Previously, only two cases of cVDPV2 were confirmed in Pakistan in 2015, one case in 2016, none in 2017 and 2018, while cVDPV2 surged again with confirmation of 22 cases in 2019. Unfortunately, Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world, alongside Afghanistan and Nigeria, affected by poliovirus.
The Punjab Polio Programme began its five-day polio immunization drive in 33 districts of Punjab on Saturday. As many as 41,000 polio teams will vaccinate more than 17.83 million children in 33 out of 36 districts, excluding Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Sheikhupura, during the five-day campaign from August 15.