The South-East Asia Region of the World Health Organization (WHO), comprising of 11 countries including Bangladesh, continues to remain polio free since the last case was reported in West Bengal, India, in January 2011.
All countries in the Region continue to maintain a very high vigil for poliovirus detection and environmental surveillance – collection of samples from sewage – is being conducted regularly in India, said a WHO statement on Saturday.
It said prompt and adequate response to vaccine-derived polio viruses (VDPVs) detected in the sewage samples in the past has prevented any spread of these viruses in the community.
On very rare occasions, VDPVs were isolated from sewage samples.
To further mitigate the small risk of VDPVs, globally nearly 155 countries have switched from using the trivalent oral polio vaccine to the bivalent oral polio vaccine.
The switch in April 2016, under the Polio End Game Plan is a critical step to prevent VDPVs and stop all polio, whether due to wild or vaccine-derived viruses.
The Ministry of Health, supported by WHO and partners of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), continues to conduct strong surveillance for any poliovirus from any source, and continues to strengthen overall population immunity to ensure children continue to be fully protected from lifelong polio paralysis.
The South-East Asia Region was certified polio-free on 27 March 2014 and there is no threat to the Region’s polio-free status from the VDPV isolates in the sewage samples, said WHO.
Bangladesh, as one of 11 countries of WHO’s South East Asia Region, has remained polio free since November 2006. The 10 other countries of the region are: Bhutan, Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK), India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand and Timor Leste.
