Have Polio-Free Countries Lost Sight of Need to Keep Vaccination Rates High?
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
A recent alarm warning against complacency in polio vaccination has come from an unlikely place: Canada.
Infectious poliomyelitis, eradicated in much of the world during the past 2 decades, remains endemic only in Nigeria, India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. But a new outbreak last spring in Tajikistan has resulted in 452 laboratory-confirmed cases of wild poliovirus type 1 and 20 deaths. At least 7 related cases have been reported in the Russian Federation.
The first polio outbreak in a World Health Organization–certified polio-free region has sparked a warning for renewed vigilance in maintaining high vaccination rates.
(Photo credit: WHO)
The outbreak is the first to strike a World Health Organization (WHO)–certified polio-free region. Tajikistan is in the WHO European Region, which was certified polio-free in 2002.
Tajikistan's outbreak, imported from northern India, prompted a bluntly worded editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). The Journal 's public health section editor, Noni MacDonald, MD, …
