Attempts to hush-up crisis denied after polio strain returns
Eradication efforts are allegedly faltering with seven children paralysed recently
Pakistan faced a fresh blow to its polio eradication efforts and accusations of a cover-up, after officials confirmed an outbreak of a virus strain thought to have been stamped out.
Seven children have been paralysed in recent months after being infected by a strain that was thought to have been wiped out, but was formerly used in vaccination campaigns.
Officials were accused of trying to hush up the outbreak, which comes amid the country’s faltering eradication efforts, with a nearly seven-fold jump in cases since 2018.
A source told the Guardian that rather than announce the outbreak, senior officials decided on a secret vaccination campaign to target the strain. Pakistan’s government and the World Health Organisation (WHO) denied a cover-up and said they had waited until the strain was formally identified before announcing it. Britain’s Department for International Development, which helps fund polio eradication in Pakistan, said it knew about the cases.
“Absolutely no cover-up,” said Zafar Mirza, the Pakistani health minister. “Before we proceeded there was a need for a full genomic sequencing to determine the cause of the virus. The situation is under control.”
Global health workers have come close to eradicating the three different types of polio viruses with vaccines containing weakened versions of each strain. Type 2 of the wild virus was declared eradicated worldwide in 2015, and type 3 last month. Yet in rare cases the virus used to create polio drops remains in sewage and mutates to become harmful.
Greatest risk
Vaccine-derived outbreaks have been recently seen in Congo, Angola and Nigeria among others. A WHO spokesman said poliovirus type 2 was first detected in August. “What is its source? That’s not clear at the moment. It is clear that it stems from a type 2-containing vaccine,” he added.
They said the wild type 1 polio virus in Pakistan was the more virulent strain and the greatest risk to Pakistani children, adding: “The priority remains to continue to intensify efforts to eradicate WPV1 as urgently as possible, while continuing to protect children against other strains of poliovirus.”