Mozambique today declared a polio outbreak after the virus was detected in a child living in the northeastern Tete region, the first case of the poliovirus in the country in almost three decades, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
The case, which marks the second imported case of wild poliovirus in southern Africa this year following an outbreak in Malawi in February, was found in a child who began experiencing the onset of paralysis towards the end of March, the WHO said.
“The detection of another case of wild poliovirus in Africa is greatly concerning … It shows how dangerous this virus is and how quickly it can spread,” Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, said in a statement.
Polio invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours. It cannot be cured, but infection can be prevented by vaccination – and a dramatic reduction in cases worldwide in recent decades has been due to intense national and regional immunization campaigns in babies and children.
The WHO is supporting large-scale vaccinations targeting millions of children across southern Africa to halt the spread of the virus on the continent, which was declared free of indigenous wild polio in 2020 after eliminating all forms of the wild virus in Africa.
In unvaccinated populations, polio viruses can re-emerge and spread swiftly. Cases of vaccine-derived polio can also occur in places where immunity is low and sanitation is poor, as vaccinated people can excrete the virus, putting the unvaccinated at risk.
Mozambique recently carried out two mass vaccination campaigns – in response to the Malawi outbreak – in which 4.2 million children were vaccinated against the disease. Efforts are currently underway to help strengthen disease surveillance in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The five countries will continue with mass vaccinations, with plans to reach 23 million children aged five years and below with the polio vaccine in the coming weeks.
Globally, wild poliovirus is endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Polio is highly infectious and largely affects children younger than five years. There is no cure for polio, and it can only be prevented by immunization. Children across the world remain at risk of wild polio type 1 as long as the virus is not eradicated in the last remaining areas in which it is still circulating.
The Polio vaccine has been made available in virtually every country around the world.
