One year since the polio outbreak: a special international delegation will examine Israel's handling of the virus - voila! news

In the video: Elrai Price updates on the investigation of the polio case that was discovered in Jerusalem (Photo: Leam)

After nearly a year of the polio outbreak in Israel, last night (Monday) members of a delegation from the World Health Organization arrived in Israel, touring the countries where there is an ongoing polio outbreak, with the aim of examining the ways of coping in Israel, sampling, monitoring and vaccination.

The polio outbreak in Israel began in February of last year when a Jerusalem girl arrived at the hospital with paralysis, and thus it became known that the virus had returned to attack in Israel as well.

Since then there is evidence in the sewers of the continued outbreak in various cities throughout the country.

Dr. Sharon Elroei Price, head of public health services at the Ministry of Health, explained to Walla! that there is no reason to worry about the special delegation that arrived in Israel, but about the disease itself: "Most children who are infected do not develop symptoms, in 20% of cases there are symptoms of a viral disease, and in less From 1% of cases in unvaccinated children - there can be paralysis.

From 2013 there was no evidence of polio in Israel until the case of the Jerusalem girl."

"After the case was discovered, the World Health Organization considered sending a delegation here, but as a result of our actions, among other things, in the awareness and vaccination campaign and the promotion of vaccinations for toddlers, we were able to eradicate that strain and there was no need for the delegation to arrive. In recent months, we have been dealing with a new strain, which we located with the help of sampling from the sewers, but it does not have a designated vaccine, and this worries us and the World Health Organization," Elrouei-Price explains.

Polio vaccine (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)

The delegation's visit will be held until Friday, during which they will see the main virus laboratory of the Ministry of Health, where they check and monitor the morbidity, both with corona and other viruses.

They will come to learn what Israel has done to control the outbreak, but also to discuss the new vaccines on the agenda: "We are dealing with a new strain," Elroy-Price continues, "of this strain there are also outbreaks in New York, it passes from the feces to the mouth mainly due to lack of hygiene, it It is secreted into the sewer and from there we sample. Our goal is that we don't see any evidence of polio in the sewer, but it takes many months and it involves great efforts on everyone's part."

The current strain does not have a dedicated live-attenuated vaccine, so the Ministry of Health's concern is growing and they are trying to examine options for eradicating the virus: "There are 150,000 children who are not vaccinated against polio in Israel, a third of them are anxious, but there are other centers. There is no risk for a child who is vaccinated, our efforts to reach all the children who are not We even got vaccinated with the inactivated vaccine."

Elroi Price claims that the Ministry of Health will not be in a hurry to bring another vaccine: "We will start an awareness campaign with the aim of maintaining hygiene to prevent the spread of this strain. In addition, we will ask the members of the delegation about a vaccine that is suitable for this strain, how the World Health Organization evaluates the care given to it. We could assume that this is a less deadly outbreak because several months have passed and no reports of infection or children with symptoms have arrived, but there is evidence that this strain can also lead to paralysis, in the US a 20-year-old guy became paralyzed and our goal is to do everything to prevent this from happening here as well."

More on the subject

• USA: A state of emergency was declared in New York due to the spread of polio

• Explanation failure: less than 7% of children have been vaccinated against polio since the Ministry of Health campaign began

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• polio

• Ministry of Health

• World Health Organization