US reported first polio case in a decade
PremiumSince 2013, the polio disease has been detected in wastewater samples in the area, as well as in a neighboring county and in New York city sewage.
Fashion Designer Brittany Strickland was "deathly scared" when she heard that the United States recorded its first polio case in almost a decade. The 33-year-old was not vaccinated against this disabling disease, according to the news agency AFP.
She finally received a shot against polio this week in Pomona, in New York's Rockland County where the first US polio case since 2013 was identified in July. "My mother was an anti-vaxxer, hence I never had any polio vaccines as a child," Strickland told AFP.
Since 2013, the polio disease has been detected in wastewater samples in the area, as well as in a neighboring county and in New York city sewage.
These developments have put experts in thought that polio, which once was one of the most feared diseases in America, may create havoc stateside again, as per AFP reports.
John Dennehy, a virologist at the City University of New York said that he had considered polio a virus that was on its way to extinction.
In the United States, health officials are urging people who are immunized to get vaccinated against polio disease, with Rockland County offering free shots. Rockland County, located 30 miles or 48 kilometres north of Manhattan, has a polio vaccination rate quite below the national average.
According to New York's health department data, only 60% of two-year-old children have received a vaccine as compared to 79% statewide, while nationally, the figure is 92%.
Polio, a crippling disease that mainly affects children under the age of five, had killed thousands of kids and left thousands more in wheelchairs and leg braces before its vaccine was developed in the last 1950s.
Globally, a massive effort has come closer to wiping out the disease in recent decades, however, it only exists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The last naturally occurring US cases of polio were reported in 1979.
What do officials say about the Rockland polio case?
After analyzing the Rockland polio case, officials believe that the origin of the infection was someone who had received the oral polio vaccine (OPV), which was discontinued in the United States in 2000.
OPV, a vaccine weaker than the polio virus, replicates in the gut and then can be passed to others through fecal-contaminated water. It can also cause serious illness and paralysis in the unvaccinated.
The officials informed that the recent polio case identified in July was in a young man who was not inoculated and the disease was causing him paralysis. They suggested that the disease had been transmitted locally as he had not traveled abroad.
Local media reports stated that the infected person was a member of the Orthodox Jewish community, where vaccine hesitancy tends to run high. More than a dozen rabbis published an open letter last week to urge members to get vaccinated against the disease.
(With AFP inputs)
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