“A serious setback” .. WHO warns of the return of an infectious disease to the world

The World Health Organization said, on Friday, that health authorities in Malawi have discovered a case of polio, which represents another setback in the ongoing efforts to eliminate the infectious disease globally, pointing out that “as long as wild polio exists anywhere in the world, countries will remain All are at risk of the virus.

And according to the Associated Press, the World Health Organization stated that Malawi health officials discovered the wild disease virus in a child in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, for the first time in 5 years, on the African continent.

The World Health Organization considers the emergence of a case infected with the wild virus a "frustrating setback", explaining that the spread of polio in many African countries in recent years was only related to viruses originally present in vaccines, and not to the virus, but the case discovered in "Malawi" is linked to the presence of live wild virus directly.

And the UN revealed that laboratory tests showed that the polio virus, discovered in Malawi, is linked to the strain that spreads in the Pakistani province of Sindh, where the disease is still endemic.

"As long as wild polio exists anywhere in the world, all countries remain at risk from the virus," the Associated Press quoted the Director of the World Health Organization in Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, as warning.

According to global health officials, polio is endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although several countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia have also recorded cases in recent years.

The World Health Organization and its partners have fought for decades to eradicate polio, their initial deadline being to eliminate the disease by 2000, but have since missed many target dates for eradication.

And many control efforts were suspended during the Corona pandemic, which allowed the disease to spread further, prompting some officials to warn that this could represent a devastating setback to plans to eradicate the disease.

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