FT: Polio is making a comeback in rich countries amid weakening immunizations

Last Friday, New York authorities reported the discovery of poliovirus in several water samples taken from the city sewer. And this has become another case in recent months when the poliovirus that causes polio is found in major cities in several developed countries. According to experts interviewed Financial Timesthis is due to the violation of vaccination programs, which were interfered with by the COVID-19 pandemic and various military conflicts.

So, at the end of June, poliovirus (VDPV2 strain, vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2) was revealed in several water samples from the London sewer. At the same time, the last case of infection with a wild type of poliovirus in the UK was noted in 1984, and in 2003 the UK was declared a polio-free country. At the end of July in the USA got sick one of the unvaccinated residents of Rockland County, New York, had polio. Doctors warned of the possibility that several hundred people had already become infected from this patient. The United States declared polio eradication in 1979. The last time poliovirus was brought into the United States from other countries was in 2013. A little earlier, Israel and Ukraine also reported several cases of the disease.

“The normal level of immunization has fallen very seriously around the world while countries have been fighting COVID-19. And this clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of the immunization systems of different countries,” said Siddhartha Datta, World Health Organization (WHO) regional consultant on vaccine-preventable infections in Europe. In July, WHO and UNICEF released data showing the biggest drop in childhood vaccinations in 30 years, with at least 25 million babies not receiving vaccines in 2021 that protect against potentially deadly diseases. And about 7 million children did not receive the third dose of the polio vaccine in 2021.

In commenting to the FT on the polio case in Rockland County, doctors note a certain level of doubt in the American population about the need for vaccination. According to physician Marnie Julberg, who herself had polio and devoted her life to studying this disease, “this is a big problem, because many modern young parents have not seen polio and its consequences, this disease is not part of their consciousness. And the reality is that if you get it, the treatment is not much better now than it was in the 50s of the last century. So it’s best to get vaccinated.”

Other experts note the importance of funding polio programs. Jay Wenger, head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s polio program, said that with the right funding, “we won’t be seeing these virus detections in New York, London or anywhere.”

Alena Miklashevskaya