Health officials have declared a national incident, whilst investigations are underway by the UK Health and Security Agency, as Poliovirus has been reportedly detected in sewage from North and East London.
The UK Health Security Agency has assured, “Investigations are underway to protect the public, who are urged to ensure polio vaccines are up to date, especially parents of young children who may have missed an immunisation opportunity”.
The last case of polio contracted in the UK was confirmed in 1984, and the UK was declared polio-free in 2003.
As a nationwide moral panic has begun, with the lurking threat of wild polio detected in the environment, some UK residents have taken to social media to express their concerns.
Some have said “Polio is spreading in the UK for the first time in 40 years. Thank Pakistan for this. Another feather in your multicultural hat” and “third world people equal third-world diseases”.
Whilst others have said: “An outbreak of Polio in London feels like the perfect analogy for where we are as a country under this Conservative Government”.
Aidan O’Leary Director for Polio Eradication Initiative at World Health Organisation says, “As long as we have transmission anywhere, then we have potential risks everywhere”.
Wild polioviruses have been eradicated in most parts of the world except in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they remain endemic.
A report by WHO on 15 June, reports that 10 children in Pakistan have been paralyzed by polio in 2022, however, no new cases have been reported since then.
Dr Manoj Joshi DL, MBE, who went to India to administer polio vaccinations and visited Pakistan, where the effort to eradicate polio is ongoing told Asian Sunday: “During my campaign, I did express that the polio virus is only a plane ride away, and so people, especially in Yorkshire, in Bradford in particular, there is a lot of travel between the endemic areas.
“So, the risk of infection, coming into Yorkshire or Bradford in particular, is just as high and just as dangerous as it has always been”.
Dr Joshi says “There has been some opposition to vaccinations, not particularly for polio, but for vaccinations, but polio is more prevalent in those areas, and there was resistance to that. But I think the Taliban and Pakistan are committed to eradicating polio.
“We get the odd mishaps of people being attacked and killed, especially the healthcare workers, but the vast majority of people are on board with vaccinations”.
In 2015, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government issued arrest warrants for 1,200 parents and guardians for refusing to administer vaccines to their children.
“In Afghanistan, because of the political situation and the wars, but in Pakistan, the prevalence, is in remote areas, which are not accessible, and operations down there are very nomadic, so they move around and that’s where the spread is,” says Dr Joshi.
Pakistan has faced major setbacks in its fight against polio, however, threats of extremist violence, and anti-vaccine sentiments, have counteracted the work of many frontline workers in Pakistan.
Contextually, as part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, the American intelligence agency organized a fake vaccination program in the town the al-Qaeda leader was believed to have been hiding in, to try to obtain DNA from Bin Laden’s family.
Subsequently, there has been a lot of pressure from community members not to take the vaccine due to potential attacks from the Taliban and other religious extremists.
According to reports, in March, a female polio worker was killed by gunmen in north-western Pakistan as she was returning home from work.
Other attacks against frontline polio workers in the country have been reported, including a roadside bombing that killed a policeman escorting healthcare workers during an anti-polio vaccination campaign in 2020.
As frontline workers in Pakistan continue to treat those affected by a surge in polio cases, Dr Shahzad Baig, who leads Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Programme, said he and his colleagues are also dealing with death threats from religious extremists and people with anti-vaccine sentiments.
“This is the resilience of the polio workers and will to fight it, that in most of the cases even in an area where there is a bomb blast or if there is a shooting or attack on our police personnel, the polio teams go back and start working,” says Dr Baig.
However, in the neighbouring country, India has silenced critics who predicted that polio itself was non-eradicable, or that polio was not eradicable in India with its low standards of sanitation and hygiene, which was achieved originally targeted for 2000 but achieved 11 years later.
On February 25, 2012, the World Health Organisation removed India from the list of ‘polio-endemic’ countries.
Dr Vanessa Saliba, Consultant Epidemiologist at UKHSA said “Vaccine-derived poliovirus is rare and the risk to the public overall is extremely low.
“We are urgently investigating to better understand the extent of this transmission and the NHS has been asked to swiftly report any suspected cases to the UKHSA, though no cases have been reported or confirmed so far”.
Chief nurse for the NHS, Jane Clegg, in London has also issued a statement saying, “The majority of Londoners are fully protected against Polio and won’t need to take any further action, but the NHS will begin reaching out to parents of children aged under 5 in London who are not up to date with their Polio vaccinations to invite them to get protected”.
The UK is considered by the World Health Organization to be polio-free, with a low risk for polio transmission due to the high level of vaccine coverage across the population.
However, vaccine coverage for childhood vaccines has decreased nationally and especially in parts of London over the past few years, as UKHSA urges people to check they are up to date with their vaccines.
Director-General of the World Health Organization has said “Surveillance, vaccination and investment to end global polio is critical, as the UK’s announcement of environmental polio samples identified in London sewage reminds us. No child has been infected so far and the World Health Organisation is supporting England and its partners”.
