Polio virus is being detected in the gutter water
Mumbai: Even as health officials are investigating a suspected case of polio in north India, the municipal public health department in the city has said that there is no case of polio detected from any part of the city though they are maintaining a high level of alertness.
The matter surfaced after a six-year-old child of Padrauna village in Gaisdi in Balrampur district in Uttar Pradesh was admitted to a hospital on suspicion of polio, following which the state health officials have sent a report to the WHO. Prior to this case, vaccine-derived polio virus (VDPV) type 2 was detected in a sewage sample collected from a site in Hyderabad.
According to Dr Mangala Gomare, deputy public health officer of the municipal corporation, these are only incidents of polio virus being detected in the gutter water and there are no actual cases of polio that have been detected. “In Mumbai too, we are taking samples from various locations to see if there is any presence of virus. But we continue to be a polio free country and every effort is being made to maintain this position,” she explained.
Further, the WHO today said there is “no threat” to the polio-free status of all South East Asian region countries, including India, and the detection of a rare strain of the crippling disease is “not unusual”. The WHO has also noted that all the countries including India maintain a “high vigil” for the detection of the disease, the World Health Organisation’s South-East Asia Regional Office (WHO SEARO) said that no child has been afflicted by wild poliovirus since the last case was reported from West Bengal in January, 2011.
