Malawi detects polio case

Malawi has declared a polio outbreak after a case was detected in a young child in the capital Lilongwe, the first case of wild poliovirus in Africa in more than five years, the World Health Organisations ( WHO) said.

Laboratory analysis showed the strain detected in Malawi was linked to one that has been circulating in Pakistan, where it is still endemic, the WHO said in a statement.

“As an imported case from Pakistan, this detection does not affect the African region’s wild poliovirus-free certification status,” the WHO said.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative said the case in Malawi was in a three-year-old girl who experienced the onset of paralysis in November last year.

Sequencing of the virus conducted in February by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases and the United States’ Centres for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed it as type 1 wild poliovirus ( WPV1).