INTRODUCTION Pakistan accounts for 85.2% of the total polio cases reported worldwide. Healthcare workers (HCWs) are an integral part of immunization campaigns and source of education for the general public. This study aimed to assess the knowledge and attitudes towards polio vaccination among HCWs providing immunisation and education to general public in Quetta and Peshawar divisions of Pakista...

Sustained and coordinated vaccination efforts have brought polio eradication within reach. Anticipating the eradication of wild poliovirus (WPV) and the subsequent challenges in preventing its re-emergence, we look to the past to identify why polio rose to epidemic levels in the mid-20th century, and how WPV persisted over large geographic scales. We analyzed an extensive epidemiological datase...

Since 1988, the world has come very close to eradicating polio through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, in which communication interventions have played a consistently central role. Mass media and information dissemination approaches used in immunization efforts worldwide have contributed to this success. However, reaching the hardest-to-reach, the poorest, the most marginalized and tho...

With eradication almost within reach, the importance of detecting every poliomyelitis case has taken on additional significance. The selected surveillance strategy must be effective and efficient. A review of polio surveillance in Australia was conducted to consider whether current strategies were optimal. Document review and semi-structured key informant interviews were used to conduct the rev...

In Japan, the routine immunization program with oral polio vaccine (OPV) has been suspended since September 2012, when a program with 4 doses of inactivated monovalent polio vaccine (IPV) or quadrivalent vaccine against diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus with IPV (DTaP-IPV) was introduced. The aim of this study was to examine the interchangeability among these 3 types of polio vaccines.We condu...

Poliovirus infects 100% of susceptible individuals and causes acute flaccid paralysis in one out of200 infections. Type 1 causes epidemic poliomyelitis; type 2 has been eradicated worldwide; and type 3 is close to being eradicated. In this region, the last case of wild poliovirus occurred in Peru in 1991. There are still two endemic countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan, but countries where there...

To the Editor: In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was formed, with the aim of reducing infection with poliomyelitis virus. Two decades later in 2008, a total of 1,625 children contracted acute flaccid paralysis caused by poliovirus infection (1). This finding represented a 150% increase over the number of cases in 2007 (1) and resulted in the reemergence of polio as one of the wor...

BACKGROUND The post-polio syndrome occurs in people who previously have had poliomyelitis. After the initial recovery, new or increasing neurologic symptoms occur. Inflammation and dyslipidaemia may play an important role in the development of atherosclerotic complications, for example myocardial infarction and angina pectoris. Previous studies on cardiovascular risk factors in the post-polio s...

BACKGROUND After being polio free for more than 10 years, an outbreak occurred in China in 2011 in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) following the importation of wild poliovirus (WPV) originating from neighboring Pakistan. METHODS To strengthen acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) surveillance in Xinjiang, "zero case daily reporting" and retrospective searching of AFP cases were initiated ...

Evidence generated through research studies has guided programmatic actions and fine-tuned strategies for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). However, many gaps still persist in the understanding of a risk-free implementation of the polio endgame. Immediate concerns relate to the introduction of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) and switch from trivalent oral polio vaccine (tOPV) to b...