PESHAWAR, Pakistan – After decades of work, polio has been eliminated almost everywhere in the world. All that was left were pockets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Medical experts had hoped that 2020 would be the last year that the main form of the virus, which can permanently paralyze or cause death, posed a threat.
The coronavirus pandemic stopped this progress.
In March, house-to-house vaccination teams working across Pakistan were forced to stop their work because of Covid-19. As a result, polio has resurfaced, including a mutated form of the virus. It has already been detected in samples taken from sewers in 74% of Pakistan in late 2020, compared to just 13% in early 2018.
“Now the virus is not just in selected pockets. The risk is everywhere ”in the country, said Rana Safdar, the doctor responsible for the polio campaign in Pakistan.
The decades-long battle to eradicate polio worldwide is one of the most ambitious and expensive public health campaigns in history. The mass vaccination campaign and its progress to stop a disease that has incapacitated or killed millions of people point to the possible success in efforts to inoculate people around the world against Covid-19.