Tura, Aug 15: Medical experts from the World Health Organization are ruling out the Wild Polio Virus strain in the discovery of the first known case of Poliomyelitis in Garo Hills and are zeroing in on the possibility it was caused by a Vaccine Derived Polio Virus or VDPV.
The country’s first case of suspected poliomyelitis, after ten long years, was reported from a village in Tikrikilla region of West Garo Hills sparking a medical panic given that Meghalaya and India were tagged “Polio Free”.
The last case of polio was reported from Howrah, West Bengal in January 2011, when a 2-year old girl developed paralysis.
Three years after the report of the last case, India was declared to be polio-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2014.
The Meghalayan Express was the first to break the polio detection story of Tikrikilla on its morning edition, on Wednesday.
Speaking to its Special Correspondent, a senior WHO official ruled out the case to be that of the wild polio virus which had caused tremendous harm to children during global outbreaks in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan where immunization is prohibited by armed groups whose writ runs over large swathes of land.
“This case is not of the Wild Polio Virus but a Vaccine Derived Polio Virus. Our doctors have visited the village and inspected the child. The baby is improving,” said a senior WHO official whose team is on the ground.
A vaccine derived polio virus infection is when someone who has had no history of vaccination gets infected after taking the polio drops vaccine since his or her weak immunity cannot create the required anti-bodies.
The child, who had a suppressed immunity due to lack of any previous immunization is said to have been taken the anti-polio drops sometime in March, this year, but a weak immune system led to health complications
Door-to-door survey from Aug 16
Surveillance teams of the state health department are launching a door-to-door campaign across the affected Tikrikilla village, beginning August 16th.
“Our teams will land in the village and collect random stool samples of infants, children and teenagers as well.
These samples will be sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune to check for the presence of the polio virus,” said P Sampath Kumar, Principal Secretary for Health in Meghalaya Government.
The reason for collection of fecal matter of villagers is because the virus is excreted in faeces of those carrying the disease.
Lack of immunization
Sampath Kumar pointed out that the primary reason behind the polio infection appears to be because the child had not been given immunization earlier.
“The vaccine derived polio virus infection occurs in unvaccinated populations. There are pockets of resistance in some places where families refuse to get their children vaccinated despite the dangers of remaining unvaccinated,” warns Kumar.
He also pointed out that the village where the child was detected with poliomyelitis had less than 50 percent immunization.
A doctor narrated that in the last two and a half years the child was never administered any vaccination. “Every time vaccination day arrived, the child would be taken away by the grandfather even though the mother, who is herself vaccinated, wanted her child to benefit from the immunization program,” said a senior medical doctor.
In the affected village there are over half a dozen households who have shunned all forms of immunization, revealed medics.
How vaccine resistance led to a Measles outbreak in Garo Hills
The Tikrikilla Poliomyelitis detection case may have shocked health officials and brought the government glare towards unvaccinated pockets, but this is not the first instance such a situation occurred in the Garo Hills.
At the start of summer, this year, health teams raced against time to contain a deadly outbreak of measles in the Purakhasia border belt of West Garo Hills district. The outbreak occurred in a village under Posingagre health sub-centre and scores of children, including elderly villagers, got infected with the measles virus.
The village was one such unvaccinated pocket in Garo Hills.
Resistance to vaccination was so high that medical teams found it challenging just to enter the village to administer medicines to the patients.
“Our field teams were prevented from even collecting blood samples to confirm the outbreak.
They were threatened with physical harm by the villagers who had shunned all immunization programs and camps,” recall doctors from Tura.
Despite measles spreading from one household to another, medical teams were not even allowed to treat the sick, they said. Ignorance and religious rites are said to have played a key role in the decision by the villagers to abstain from taking vaccination.
“The biggest worry is that these resistance pockets could one day play a dangerous role in the spread of a highly infectious disease outbreak. People under such pockets can also become dormant carriers of viruses,” warns doctors.
