Virologist on poliovirus | Info

Source: TV Prva/MONDO/Stefan Stojanović

The Institute for Public Health of Serbia “Dr. Milan Jovanović Batut” published a report stating that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), Serbia is a country with moderate, i.e. medium risk of wild poliovirus and is located in the immediate vicinity of countries where this risk is high.

Poliovirus causes polio. Virologist and microbiologist Milanko Shekler explained to the MONDO portal that Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are countries where wild poliovirus is constantly occurring because they have a problem with vaccination coverage. “Nowhere else in the world does that problem exist, and it could not be solved without a vaccine“, our interlocutor started the conversation.

He pointed out that 90 percent of children who get the poliovirus do not have any symptoms and do not get sick, but that the virus leaves 0.1 to 0.5 percent of children with permanent consequences.

“It leaves paralysis, partial or total, depending on which part of the motor neurons in the brain it affects. It can happen that a child or an adult cannot breathe and has to use an artificial lung for the rest of their life. It can also happen that they can’t speak,” Sheckler noted.

The virologist and microbiologist told MONDO that poliovirus is transmitted airborne. According to him, children transmit it to each other in play, through mouth and close contact. Our interlocutor pointed out that the virus is highly infectious.

“It is almost impossible to prevent infection without vaccination. I emphasize and repeat that vaccination is the only way. The virus is especially dangerous because a huge number of children will not have symptoms but will be contagious and will spread it further. In that case, the number of infected people grows rapidly, and one out of 200 children will remain immobile. And one immobile child out of a million children is a lot because it is someone’s whole world“, noted Sheckler.

Source: TV Prva/screenshot

He explained that adults rarely get sick because most people get infected as children and thus acquire immunity. He pointed out that the symptoms, if any, are mild and can be confused with the flu or stomach problems.

“The symptoms are very non-specific and some digestive problems, fever occur. The disease is very inconvenient and it is very difficult to diagnose it based on the symptoms. However, the disease was eliminated thanks to the vaccine. I will mention that at the beginning vaccines were made only in America, Cuba and Torlak,” virologist and microbiologist Milanko Šekler concluded the conversation for MONDO.

On the website of the City Public Health Institute of Belgrade, it was announced that polio is an infectious disease caused by a virus that, after entering the body, can cause damage to the nervous system, causing paralysis (deprivation). One in 200 infected people develops paralysis, and 5-10 percent of people with paralysis die due to paralysis of the breathing muscles.

As a “small disease” it is characterized by symptoms such as fever, weakness, headache, nausea and vomiting, and if the disease progresses to a “major disease”, severe pain in the muscles and stiffness of the neck and back appear with the appearance of acute flaccid weakness, which is characteristic by asymmetry and which leaves lifelong disability.

The disease occurs individually and in epidemics, and is transmitted by direct contact, mainly fecal-oral. The time from introduction of the causative agent to the development of the disease ranges from three to 35 days. In patients, the virus is excreted in the stool up to six weeks after the onset of the disease.

This is a disease of children under the age of five in 80-90 percent of cases. The vaccine given in multiple doses provides lifelong protection. The number of polio cases in the world has decreased by 99 percent since 1988, thanks to the use of the vaccine. The last case in Serbia was registered in 1996.

American President Franklin D. Roosevelt also lived with paralysis caused by the poliovirus, who fell ill in 1921 at the age of 39. Since then he has been confined to a wheelchair.