Berlin – The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is warning of a return of polio in Europe. The continent has been considered polio-free since 2002, the researchers said yesterday in Berlin.
But last year, polioviruses were detected in wastewater in five European countries. In addition, resources to combat it would be cut and international institutions weakened, the researchers warned.
In regions where the number of polio cases is increasing, the disease could now reach polio-free areas again – including Germany. However, willingness to vaccinate there remains high.
Scientists, including in Germany and other industrialized countries, recently called for increased willingness to vaccinate against poliomyelitis. “Complete eradication of the disease will not be possible in the foreseeable future,” says a recent report German medical journal published study by scientists from the universities of Bielefeld and Heidelberg. The disease remains a global risk.
The study points out that large parts of the world are now considered polio-free. But so-called wild viruses continued to circulate in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan only began a nationwide polio vaccination campaign in mid-October.
The goal is to vaccinate more than 45 million girls and boys against polio. More than 400,000 health workers will go door-to-door to ensure every child receives the vaccination. One reason for the large-scale campaign: 29 new cases of polio have already been registered this year.
There is also another problem: mutations in vaccine viruses that trigger new outbreaks in countries with low vaccination rates. Such viruses also reached industrialized countries through international mobility. The researchers warn that they recently appeared in wastewater samples in several European cities, including Germany. There have also been isolated cases of polio in industrialized countries in recent years.
The authors of the study also warn of new risks. International donors such as the US development agency USAID have cut their funding. As a result, resources for vaccination campaigns have shrunk, while conflict, weak health systems and growing vaccine hesitancy have exacerbated the problem.
Vaccination against polio is considered one of the greatest achievements of the international health system. The World Health Organization (WHO) launched the program to eradicate the disease in 1988. Polio should be eradicated by the year 2000. Since then, the number of cases of illness has been reduced by 99.99 percent. According to the study, vaccination prevented millions of paralysis and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Polio was long considered one of the most feared epidemics of the 20th century. The long-term consequences were also feared: affected children had to be continuously ventilated using “iron lungs”. In the 1950s there were still around 600,000 cases of poliomyelitis per year in Europe and America. In 1961, the Federal Republic experienced its last poliomyelitis epidemic with around 5,000 cases, of which around 300 were fatal.
The polio vaccines that are still used today were also developed during these years. The inactivated Salk vaccine was available from 1955. The oral Sabin live vaccine was introduced in 1960 in what was then the GDR and in 1962 in the Federal Republic – and was advertised there with the catchy slogan “Oral vaccination is sweet, polio is cruel”.
“The containment of polio is one of the greatest successes in public health, i.e. health care for the entire population,” said Oliver Razum from Bielefeld University, last author of the article. It is crucial that consistently high vaccination rates are achieved everywhere in the world. Doctors in Germany should also routinely check the vaccination status and make up for missing vaccinations.
