Poliomyelitis or polio is an acute viral infection that, in its severe form, invades the nervous system and causes paralysis. In its mild form the disease produces mild symptoms (e.g., low-grade fever, malaise), or none. Also known as infantile paralysis, it is found worldwide, occurring mainly in children. The Salk vaccine (injected killed-virus vaccine) and the Sabin vaccine (oral live-virus vaccine) have greatly reduced the incidence of polio, nearly eradicating it from developed nations.

Four doses of polio vaccines are required including one dose on or after the fourth birthday. If the third dose was administered on or after the fourth birthday only three doses are required.

quot;Polio is really very much a disease of children. First of all, this is the disease which spreads by what we call the fecal-oral route, so contaminated food or water can spread this disease, and children, of course, are the ones who often are most likely to have the least sanitary of habits and thus most efficiently transmit the virus between themselves. As a result, if you stop transmission of this virus between young children, you will stop transmission in a population.

quot;Something like 95 percent of all the people who get polio are under the age of 5. They’re all little people. Some are 4, some are 3, but some are 2 and some are 1, but they’re little people and I say they’re the most defenseless part of society." quot;Over the last two years now, we’ve seen the poliovirus become more and more localized geographically, but also more localized in high risk groups.

quot;To eradicate a disease like polio, you have to stop the transmission of the wild poliovirus. You do that by immunizing all the children in the world against the disease. You hold National Immunization Days, where children and mothers and fathers come to a center and they get immunized. You also do house-to-house strategy. You go out into the villages or into the communities and you knock on all the doors, and you ask them to bring out the children and immunize those children.

Up to about 95 percent of people infected with polio have no symptoms. However, infected persons without symptoms can still spread the virus and cause others to develop polio. About four to eight percent of infected persons have minor symptoms such as fever, sore throat, upset stomach, or flu-like symptoms and have no paralysis or other serious symptoms.

Polio vaccine or IPV is a shot, given in the leg or arm, depending on age. Polio vaccine may be given at the same time as other vaccines. Most people should get polio vaccine when they are children. Children get 4 doses of IPV, at these ages: Most adults do not need polio vaccine because they were vaccinated as children.

Ans. Contraindication to Polio are very few like immuno compromised host, severe diarrhoea and and acute febrile illness.

Ans. Pulse Polio Immunization means intermittent polio immunization drive inthe community or region to vaccinate all susceptible children irrespective of their previous immunization status. Pulse Polio immunization helps to replace the wild virus (disease causing virus) by vaccine virus in community. Many countries like Brazil, Cuba and Israel have eradicated polio disease by adapting pulse polio approach.

Yes. Polio used to happen in international epidemics, with many people being affected with the condition at the same time. The last of these major epidemics took place in the early 1950s, after which time the Salk vaccine was made available, and polio was largely eliminated. People affected with polio showed a wide variety of symptoms, with many having paralysis of the muscle groups of the lower limb, or the respiratory muscles.

Post-polio syndrome is a condition as a result of having had polio earlier in life. There is no indication that post-polio syndrome is contagious. The only time a person is contagious is during acute poliomyelitis. For an authoritative and detailed description of acute poliomyelitis, check out Poliomyelitis at http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/polio.pdf

PHI has received detailed information from the following countries. PHI invites polio-related groups in any country to send their statistics to webmaster@post-polio.org for publication.

We are hoping that within the next 6 months we will stop the spread of polio in the Indian Subcontinent including Pakistan. This will depend to a large extent on having a very good immunization campaign. We are hoping that the world will be ready for certification as polio-free by 2005.

quot;If a child somehow ingests the virus, that virus will then reproduce in the child's intestines and then is absorbed in the intestines and travels to the nerve cells in the spinal cord, sometimes even in the brain. It has an affinity to receptors in the spinal cord, and there it does its damage. It decimates nerve cells of the spinal cord and you become paralyzed."

quot;The virus is directly related to your exposure of fecal material. So in the developed world, of course, the exposure is much less than in the developing world. If you have no access to clean water you’re at higher risk than if you have access to chlorinated water. But even in the developed world the process of changing diapers can expose you to the virus. So, even things that we consider relatively routine do present a mechanism for transmitting the virus.