Marco Polio

In this week’s blog, I will be talking about polio. Now some may say, what is polio? Well, you should know what it is since most of you have been vaccinated for it. Polio aka poliomyelitis is a life-threatening disease caused by the poliovirus, which is a single-stranded enveloped RNA virus. You know what that means y’all? It can SIMPLY be killed with hand sanitizers. Polio is a paralytic disease, which means it causes paralysis. I find it odd that only people with the paralytic infection are considered to have the disease. Is every case of polio associated with paralysis? Can the infected person be asymptomatic?

The poliovirus is highly infectious and is spread from human-to human contact. It is spread through contact with poop from an infected person and also through droplets as an infected person sneezes or coughs. It has a human-only reservoir and the portal of entry is the mouth. This virus mainly infects the throat and intestines, however, it can also the spinal cord, which leads to paralysis. About 25% of people infected with poliovirus will display flu-like symptoms, which last from 2-5 days. Most people infected with polio will not have any visible signs.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that children get the polio vaccine to protect against the virus. There are two types of the vaccines: inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) and the oral polio vaccine (OPV). The IPV requires a series of four doses. The United States only use the IPV and do not use the OPV due to the fact that they want to eliminate the risk of “vaccine-derive poliovirus” that comes with OPV. Many other countries use the OPV because it is cheaper. Thanks to the US for not the OPV, because now polio-free! Yay!!!

Unfortunately, the poliovirus is still prevalent in other countries and remains in endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was launched back in the late 1980s to combat the polio epidemic, which was around 400,000 cases each year. I’m satisfied to see this dynamic in statistics change from an epidemic to an endemic, which means we’re making progress. Vaccinations are important because we can completely eradicate this disease off the face of the Earth.