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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  Over 200 samples tested positive to polio-like symptoms in UP
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Over 200 samples tested positive to polio-like symptoms in UP

Health ministry says in a statement that cases were of Acute Flacid Paralysis and not polio

Health experts who have been closely following this trend suggest that the children in Uttar Pradesh could be suffering from a different , but equally worrying, strain of the polio virus. Photo: Hindustan TimesPremium
Health experts who have been closely following this trend suggest that the children in Uttar Pradesh could be suffering from a different , but equally worrying, strain of the polio virus. Photo: Hindustan Times

New Delhi: A year after India was declared polio free, more than 200 samples have tested positive to polio-like symptoms in Uttar Pradesh.

Officials had informed that children aged between 5 and 15 years complained of paralysis and loss of muscular strength in hands and legs, reported The Times Of India on Saturday. The samples collected from Baheri, Meergunj, Faridpur and Nawabgunj have been sent for testing to the central laboratory in Mumbai.

“Weakness in hands and legs does not essentially mean that the child is suffering from polio. Only if the test report of the stool sample confirms presence of wild polio virus can it be treated as a case of polio. We have received reports of 170 samples from the lab so far and they have been negative. Reports for the remaining are awaited," chief medical officer (CMO) Vijay Yadav, said in a statement to TOI.

The ministry of health and family welfare in a statement said that cases reported from Uttar Pradesh were of Acute Flacid Paralysis (AFP) and not polio. The press release added that every year, approximately 50,000 AFP cases are picked up and investigated from across the country by the polio surveillance network.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a nation needs to have zero recorded cases of an infectious disease for three years for the disease to be eradicated. The last case of polio in the country was reported on 13 January 2011, from West Bengal. India was certified as a polio-free nation by March, leaving Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria as the remaining polio endemic countries.

The symptoms that have emerged in Uttar Pradesh, though similar to polio, point towards Non Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis - a disease the government has decidedly ignored. WHO defines the Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) syndrome as “as a sudden onset of paralysis/weakness in any part of the body of a child less than 15 years of age." There are many causes of AFP, so each AFP needs to be evaluated to find out if the paralysis is due to polio or not. Polio is only one out of the many causes.

Although the incidence of polio acute flaccid paralysis (AFP)came down in India, the non-polio AFP (NPAFP) rate increased. Nationwide, the NPAFP rate is 11.82/100,000 where the expected rate is 1-2/100,000.

Mint had last year reported about the alarming rise in cases of NPAFP while the country celebrated its newly acquired polio free status. In 2004, 12,000 cases of NPAFP were reported in the country, which increased to 25,000 in 2005. In 2007, the number crossed 40,000 and in 2011, the year India reported its last polio case, nearly 61,000 children were detected to be suffering from NPAFP. The incidence of NPAFP went down in Bihar and UP in 2012, with a decrease in the number of oral polio vaccine (OPV) doses delivered.

There were 53,421 AFP cases in 2013 which decreased slightly to 53,383 in 2014.

Health experts who have been closely following this trend suggest that the children in Uttar Pradesh could be suffering from a different , but equally worrying, strain of the polio virus.

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Published: 20 Jun 2015, 12:29 PM IST
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