Polio: what is it?

Poliomyelitis, more commonly known as “polio”, is a viral disease which rather affects children, and more particularly the children of Less than 5 years. The virus responsible for this highly contagious disease attacks the central nervous system and can cause in a few hours, in about one in 200 cases, a paralysis definitive. Polio has been a major cause of disability around the world. This virus, which causes death in 5 to 10% of cases of paralysis, enters the body through the stuffy then develops in intestines. He can then win the spinal cord or brainstem and cause irreparable damage. However, in many cases the disease remains asymptomatic or generates only mild symptoms. However, the affected person risks transmitting the disease to those around them because polio is transmitted from person to person.

There are three strains of poliovirus, a virus that belongs to the same family as those responsible for influenza or hepatitis A, and which cannot survive outside a human organism. Type 2 poliovirus has been eradicated in 1999. The most common type 1 virus and type 3 virus continue to circulate endemically (= in certain regions of the world). The virus spreads in feces and can infect water and food. The incubation time varies between 9 and 12 days.

In developed countries, polio has disappeared. But it still kills or paralyzes in some countries. At present, a global action of vaccination is undertaken and, now only Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan are endemic countries (compared to more than 125 countries in 1988).

La vaccination is the only, albeit very effective, way to control polio, sometimes also called Heine-Medin disease or childhood paralysis.

People with polio can develop years later syndromes post-polio (SPP). Nearly half of those who are cured would be affected. No treatment will cure or prevent the fatigue, weakness, or muscle and joint pain characteristic of PPS. The causes of this syndrome remain unknown for the moment. However, people who have it are not contagious.

Prevalence

Thanks to vaccination efforts across the world, polio cases have dropped significantly. Their number rose from 350 cases in 000, to 1988 cases in 1625 and 2008 in 650. At the end of the 2011s, a resolution aimed at eradicating polio from the world was adopted. As such, the Global Poliomyelitis Eradication Initiative (IMEP) was born under the leadership of national governments, the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States and UNICEF. Private funds, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have also helped support this initiative to immunize all children against polio.

Complications

95% of polio cases show no complications. However, if the virus reaches the central nervous system, a muscle paralysis, with deformity of the hips, ankles or feet, can appear and lead to death.

Paralysis caused by polio can be temporary or permanent.

Other complications may appear XNUMX years after infection, even if the person has been cured. It’s about syndrome post-polio.