Last week, two children in Jerusalem tested positive and another five were suspected of having polio in the capital, the report said.
The cases are the first in Israel since 1989. The Ministry of Health has recommended that Israeli parents vaccinate their children against polio if they have not already done so.
The polio virus is breaking out again in many countries, including Africa and Eastern Europe.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday announced that more than 80 million doses of the polio drug will be given to more than 23 million children under the age of 5 in a mass vaccination campaign in African countries such as Malawi. , Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Malawi announced the outbreak on 17 February, the first such case in the country in 30 years and the first in Africa since the region was certified free of native wild poliovirus. location in 2020.
War-torn Ukraine is also grappling with an outbreak of vaccine-derived polio with two cases in the western part of the country last year and most recently in December. Poliovirus was also reported. isolated from 19 healthy contacts, Nature reported.
Ukraine’s ongoing conflict with Russia has also halted a three-week vaccination campaign for nearly 140,000 children, launched on February 1; it has also hit polio surveillance, so the virus could be spreading undetected, warned the Geneva-based Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
Recently, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also issued travel advice to “Afghanistan, areas in Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Yemen” in relation to the polio epidemic. paralysis.
Source: IANS
