Ganesh Prasad Mishra

Last Friday (Dec 6), The Star reported the country’s Health Ministry confirming that a three-month-old boy from Tuaran, Sabah, has been infected with vaccine-derived poliovirus type 1 (VDPV1) after being admitted into a hospital’s intensive care unit.

The Star quoted health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah who said on Sunday (Dec 8): “The patient is currently undergoing treatment in an isolation ward and is in stable condition but needs respiratory support.”

He added that the poliovirus is classified as a circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 1 (VDPV1), which originates from a poliovirus that has been weakened by the orally-administered polio vaccine.

The Star reported that Dr Hisham said the weakened virus excretes from the body through faeces.

However, in unsanitary environments, the virus can infect others who have not been immunised against polio and will “thus spread in communities whose polio immunisation rates are less than 95 per cent”.

He warned that if the disease is left uncontrolled, it can genetically mutate until it once again becomes an active virus.

In an article on Monday (Dec 9), The Associated Press (AP) quoted Dr Hisham as saying that vaccination will be stepped up after an investigation in the infant’s home village showed that 25 out of 204 children, aged between two months and 15 years, were not vaccinated against polio.

Link: https://www.businessinsider.my/malaysias-first-polio-case-in-27-years-is-a-child-who-wasnt-vaccinated-here-are-3-things-to-know-about-the-incurable-virus/