A new polio vaccine has been rolled out in 155 countries in a renewed effort to eradicate the paralyzing disease by targeting its two remaining strains.
The move had been in the planning stages for 18 months, the
BBC News reported on Sunday. Some 74 cases were reported in 2015 and 10 this year, all in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The vaccine will no longer include a weakened version of the type 2 polio virus because that disease was eradicated in 1999.
"This represents the largest withdrawal of one vaccine, and associated rollout of another vaccine in history," noted the
Global Polio Eradication Initiative website. "The extensive use of trivalent (oral poliovirus vaccine) around the world has been largely responsible for reducing the number of cases of wild poliovirus from over 350,000 in 1988 to just 74 in 2015."
Healthcare workers won't need any new training because the vaccine will still be given by drops in the mouth, said BBC News.
"We absolutely need to keep the pressure up, but we think we could reach the point where we have truly interrupted the transmission (of polio) at the end of the year or the end of the low season (winter) next year," Michel Zaffran, the World Health Organization's director of polio eradication, told
The Guardian. "It is going to be an extraordinary achievement. This has been an ongoing effort since 1988."
Zaffran described for The Guardian the remaining challenges in Afghanistan where 32 of the 47 districts that have been prioritized for vaccinations and surveillance are under control of "anti-government forces."
"In these cases it is difficult to reach the children," Zaffran said. "We are vaccinating at transit points but we are still confident, because we’ve only had two reported cases this year so far compared to 22 (total cases) last year. We know when polio strikes because when a child is paralyzed, the parents seek help and when they cannot find it locally they move."
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