WHO GRANTS PREQUALIFICATION TO INNOVATIVE POLIO VACCINE

In late December 2023, the World Health Organization issued its first-ever prequalification approval for a vaccine being used under its Emergency Use Listing (EUL) regulatory pathway – novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2).

Since rollout of this next-generation vaccine began in March 2021, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has administered nearly 1 billion doses of nOPV2 across 35 countries, protecting millions of children against illness and paralysis.

Prequalification will enable additional countries to access the vaccine more easily for more sustainable response to outbreaks of type 2 variant poliovirus (cVDPV2).

“This is a historic milestone for polio eradication and for public health,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“Novel oral polio vaccine type 2 has blazed a trail for other new vaccines that address critical health emergencies, and its use demonstrates the utility of the EUL mechanism in helping to rapidly get new products to where they’re needed most.”

This information originally appeared in the press release from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

ROTARY INTERNATIONAL ​DONATES $14 MILLION TO ​SUSTAIN POLIO ERADICATION

EFFORTS IN NIGERIA

Committed to ensuring that every child is safe from the paralysis caused by poliovirus, Rotary International has donated a $14 million grant to the government of Nigeria to support polio surveillance activities and halt the spread of all forms of poliovirus across the country.

The grant, which will be executed through the World Health Organization (WHO), will help to keep the country’s foot on the pedal through polio surveillance activities to sustain the gains achieved on wild poliovirus eradication and work towards eradicating the Circulating Variant Poliovirus (cVPV2) from Nigeria.

Welcoming the new grant, WHO Country Representative, Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo, affirmed that: “Surveillance is key to achieving health security”.

Dr Mulombo appreciated the minister for the confidence put in WHO to work alongside the government, other stakeholders and partners to achieve the health agenda as depicted in the renewed hope and the new health sector, renewal, and investment initiative which has health security as one of its key components.

Expressing gratitude to Rotary International for the grant, he said the eradication of all forms of poliovirus in Nigeria is key when discussing health security in the country.

He said: “ I commit the organisation to making the best use of this funding and ensure efficiency, transparency and accountability and safeguard that the use of the funds do not give rise to any form of misconduct, including sexual exploitation and abuse against the community we serve.

The grant will boost work on polio surveillance until Nigeria is through the goal of eradicating all forms of poliovirus. Work is going on to get rid of CVPVD2, and surveillance is a key component of the intervention”.

This information was originally released on the World Health Organisation website. Find out more here.

REVIEW OF 2023 AND LOOKING ​AHEAD TO 2024

Despite significant geo-political and environmental challenges in the two remaining WPV1 (wild poliovirus 1)-endemic countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the polio programme has continued to reach greater numbers of children with polio vaccines.

Thanks to these continued polio eradication efforts, the latest statistics show that 12 cases of WPV1 were reported in 2023, those cases being:

• Afghanistan 6 (2023 - 2)
• Pakistan 6 (2023 - 20)

The cumulative total for the past three years in the two endemic countries amount to just 39.

After a wild poliovirus outbreak that was confirmed in southeast Africa in early 2022, neither Malawi nor Mozambique has reported a WPV case since August 2022 thanks to a concerted subregional emergency response across five neighbouring countries.

Thanks to the novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2), strong political commitment and community-based efforts to reach more children with the vaccine, the number of cases of variant poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) continued to decline in 2023.

In September 2023, after a massive vaccination response in the shadow of ongoing war, Ukraine officially stopped its outbreak of type 2 variant polio that began in 2021. New York, London and Jerusalem, where high-profile outbreaks began in 2022, have not detected the virus in recent months.

Thanks to the efforts of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and its partners, health workers vaccinated more than 400 million children in 2023, preventing an estimated 650,000 cases of paralysis from polio and saving the lives of up to 60,000 children.

Rotary and all it’s members have been key players in eradicating polio for the last 35 years and those efforts are set to continue going into 2024.

This information was originally sourced from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative website. Find more details here.