We were so close to eradicating polio, but the pandemic lifted our focus. And now new cases are emerging in Malawi, The last wild polio case in the southeastern African country was 30 years ago, and polio was declared eradicated in all of Africa in 2020.
It came back. Not on a wide scale. Not in a way that will set the world afire. Yet in a way that should make us understand the importance of the work of Rotary International, and of the PolioPlus program. Diseases that we scarcely think about and no longer fear, like polio or measles, can and do re-emerge.
Soon after the detection of polio last month in a 3-year-old girl, who is now paralyzed, UNICEF started a huge, four-nation vaccination campaign to reach 20 million children in Malawi and its neighbors. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is involved with the stepped-up surveillance in the region.
The rule of thumb is that if Malawi has diagnosed one child with paralysis, another 200 have been infected, somewhere, with less severe or asymptomatic polio cases. Surveillance shows the polio virus is not widespread and can be eradicated in the region again, but has probably been circulating since 2019.