Addressing journalists in Harare yesterday, Health and
Child Care deputy minister Sleiman Timios Kwidini said the detection of these
viruses in the environment or in humans constitutes a polio outbreak.
“The Health and Child Care ministry wishes to inform the
public that it has confirmed through laboratory tests the presence of a Type 2
circulating poliovirus variant in environmental samples that were collected
towards the end of 2023 from sewage sites covering Budiriro, Mbare and Mufakose
catchments in Harare Metropolitan province,” he said.
“In addition and through intensified poliomyelitis disease
surveillance in the country, a similar circulating poliovirus variant has been
detected in a 10-year-old child from Sanyati district of Mashonaland West
province, who presented to us with acute paralysis and had laboratory tests
done for confirmation.”
The country has been on high alert after neighbouring
Mozambique and Malawi confirmed polio outbreaks in 2022 and four rounds of
vaccination were carried out between October 2022 and October 2023.
“The virus that was detected in these occasions is a rare
type of poliovirus that can occur when the weakened live virus in the oral
polio vaccine (OPV) mutates over time and becomes able to circulate in the
community. Hence it is referred to as circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus
-type 2 (CVDPV),” said the deputy minister, while urging a multi-sectoral
approach to curb the spread of the disease.
“The ministry would like to reassure the public that they
have taken swift action to investigate and contain the outbreak to prevent any
further spread that may occur.
“Following the detection, the ministry immediately declared
the event to the World Health Organisation as required under international
health regulations and instituted emergency response measures.
“These included the activation of a polio incident
management system and the appointment of an incident manager for a co-ordinated
outbreak response, conducting thorough investigations, intensifying polio
surveillance throughout the country and planning for emergency nationwide polio
vaccination campaigns to ensure that transmission is stopped rapidly.”
Kwidini announced the commencement of round two of
emergency national polio vaccination campaign targeting children below 10
years, scheduled for this and next month.
“The detailed polio risk analysis conducted by the ministry
identified the below 10-year-old age group as having a higher risk to these
Type 2 polioviruses since vaccines targeting this type were stopped globally in
2015 after global eradication.
“In the planned vaccination campaign, all children below 10
years are being targeted with an initial two rounds of novel oral polio vaccine
(nOPV2) to quickly boost their protection from this type of poliovirus,” he
said. Newsday
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