Key result
Continuing routine polio vaccination remains recommended because proving complete eradication is impossible.
Why the study?
The safety of ending polio vaccination early in the 21st century remains uncertain due to challenges in ensuring complete elimination of poliovirus and its transmission.
Is it safe to end routine polio vaccination globally?
Is it safe to end routine polio vaccination globally?
The review argues against the WHO's plans to end polio vaccination, citing the impossibility of ensuring safety and the severe nature of the disease.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Caution against ending routine polio vaccination; leaves open whether eradication verification standards can ever be met.
This article reviews the literature concerning polio vaccination and uses that information to evaluate the World Health Organization's announced plans to end polio vaccination early in the 21st century. The safe elimination of polio vaccination would require the elimination of all polio cases, including paralytic cases, mild, nonparalytic cases, and vaccine-associated cases; proof that polio does not have any nonhuman alternative host; proof that no one alive can still shed the poliovirus; proof that no poliovirus persists in the environment; and proof that no live poliovirus, either the wild type or the vaccine strain, exists in medical or terrorist hands. Because it does not seem possible to ensure that ending vaccination against polio would be safe, and given the fact the polio is a terrible and untreatable disease, it would seem prudent to continue polio vaccination for the foreseeable future.
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Geier et al. (2002) conducted a review in Polio. Polio vaccination vs. Ending vaccination was evaluated. Continuing routine polio vaccination is recommended because ensuring the safe elimination of vaccination is not possible due to the stringent requirements for proving complete eradication.
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