All about the latest polio vaccine scare

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The government has now urged all parents to get their children vaccinated against polio.
A message, which cautions parents to refrain from administering oral polio vaccine to kids up to the age of five, has gone viral on social media.

The message started spreading after reports claimed that oral polio vaccines have been found contaminated with the type-2 polio virus. The vials were manufactured by a Ghaziabad-based pharmaceutical company.

Union Health Ministry has infact confirmed the contamination of few batches of vaccines of a particular manufacturer in three states: Maharashtra, Telengana and Uttar Pradesh.

However, all polio vaccine stocks of of that manufacturer have now been withdrawn.

The government has now urged all parents to get their children vaccinated against polio.

India continues to be polio-free since for past more than 7 years. However, since polio cases are still occurring in a few neighboring countries, India needs to maintain population immunity against polio to mitigate risk of importation.

Government of India is providing Inactivated Polio Vaccine in addition to the bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine under its Universal Immunization Programme to provide double protection against polio.

As per the Ministry, while the last type-2 wild polio virus case was detected in 1999, the last polio case due to wild polio virus in the country was detected on January 13, 2011.

India was certified polio-free in March 2014 and continues to be so.

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