PESHAWAR, Pakistan – After decades of work, polio has been eliminated almost everywhere in the world. Only pockets remained in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Medical experts hoped that 2020 would be the last year in which the main form of the virus, which can permanently paralyze or cause death, is a threat.
The coronavirus pandemic has stopped this progress.
In March, house-to-house vaccination teams working across Pakistan were forced to stop working because of Covid-19. As a result, polio reappeared, including a mutant form of the virus. It was now detected in sewage samples in 74% of Pakistan by the end of 2020, up from just 13% in early 2018.
“Now the virus is not just in certain pockets. The risk is everywhere “in the country, said Rana Safdar, the doctor responsible for the Pakistani polio campaign.
The decades-long battle to eradicate polio worldwide is one of the most ambitious and costly public health campaigns in history. The momentum of mass vaccination and its progress towards arresting a disease that has disabled or killed millions of people indicates the possible success of efforts to inoculate people around the world against Covid-19.