Arushi Bidhuri
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Written By: Arushi Bidhuri | Updated : May 23, 2022 3:31 PM IST
Mozambique, a country located in Southeastern Africa, detected its first case of the disease this week after a toddler got wild poliovirus Type 1. It's the first imported case of wild poliovirus in the country since 1992, and the second in Southern Africa this year. Malawi saw an outbreak earlier this year. The regional director for the World Health Organization, Africa said that the detection of the new case was "greatly concerning."
The case in Mozambique was discovered in the north-eastern region of Tete, with the afflicted kid experiencing paralysis in late March. According to The Guardian, genomic sequencing data revealed that the latest confirmed case was linked to a strain that circulated in Pakistan in 2019 and was similar to a case recorded in Malawi earlier this year.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are three types of the wild poliovirus: type 1, type 2 and type 3. As per the data, type 2 was eradicated in September 2015, and type 3 became extinct in October 2019. But type 1 of wild poliovirus remains and one case of the disease has been reported in Mozambique.
As per CDC, polio is a deadly disease that can affect your nervous system. Because the virus dwells in an infected person's faeces, infected people can spread the sickness to others if they do not wash their hands thoroughly after defecating. People can become infected by drinking polluted water or eating contaminated food.
The virus can paralyse children, leaving them handicapped, and it is sometimes fatal. Although there is no cure, immunisation has gotten the globe closer to eliminating the disease's wild form. The virus replicates in the colon before infecting the nerve system and causing paralysis. Because there is no cure for the disease, the patient will remain disabled for the rest of his life.
According to the data from CDC, people infected with poliovirus hardly show any symptoms. However, 1 in 4 infected people may show flu-like symptoms which last up to 2-5 days. Some of the other minor symptoms of the disease include:
In rare cases, the patient may suffer permanent loss of muscle function (paralysis).
Children are protected by the polio vaccine because it prepares their bodies to resist the poliovirus. Almost all youngsters (99 to 100 out of 100) will be protected from polio if they receive all of the necessary doses of the inactivated polio vaccine. Another way to keep yourself and others around you safe is by maintaining hand hygiene.
