While many peo­ple have nev­er seen a case of po­liomyelitis (po­lio), Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne says it is a dis­ease that crip­pled gen­er­a­tions in the past.

This is why PA­HO has alert­ed all Heads of State in the Amer­i­c­as to ramp up vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age fol­low­ing New York Gov­er­nor Kathy Hochul de­clar­ing a state of emer­gency to com­bat a grow­ing out­break in the US state.

Eti­enne sound­ed the warn­ing dur­ing PA­HO’s week­ly COVID-19 me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, ad­vis­ing that im­mu­ni­sa­tion is the on­ly way to sup­press po­lio.

It has been near­ly 30 years since the Amer­i­c­as be­came the first re­gion to erad­i­cate po­lio through com­pre­hen­sive vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns.

“Dwin­dling vac­ci­na­tion rates wors­ened by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic have left many of our pop­u­la­tions un­pro­tect­ed. Let us be very clear: po­lio is not a treat­able dis­ease. Pre­ven­tion is the on­ly op­tion, and pre­ven­tion is on­ly pos­si­ble with vac­cines,” Eti­enne said.

In Ju­ly, US au­thor­i­ties un­cov­ered a case of paral­y­sis in a man caused by po­lio. He was un­vac­ci­nat­ed for the dis­ease.

In the fol­low­ing weeks, au­thor­i­ties found po­lio in waste­water sam­ples in sev­er­al states, in­clud­ing New York. New York Gov­er­nor Kath­leen Hochul de­clared a state of emer­gency on Sep­tem­ber 9 over the grow­ing out­break.

Eti­enne said au­thor­i­ties found the virus cir­cu­lat­ing in com­mu­ni­ties, of­fi­cial­ly con­sti­tut­ing an out­break.

In New York, po­lio ap­pears and spreads quick­ly and qui­et­ly in com­mu­ni­ties with in­suf­fi­cient cov­er­age.

“I know that many of you have nev­er seen a case of po­lio, but let me say that po­lio crip­pled gen­er­a­tions be­fore vac­cines were de­vel­oped, sen­tenc­ing thou­sands of chil­dren to life­long pain and dis­abil­i­ty. We do not want a re­turn to this sce­nario, es­pe­cial­ly when we have the means to stop it,” Eti­enne said.

The US Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion said po­lio is a “crip­pling and po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly in­fec­tious dis­ease caused by a virus that spreads from per­son to per­son. It in­vades the brain and spinal cord, which can lead to paral­y­sis. One in 200 in­fec­tions leads to ir­re­versible paral­y­sis. Of those paral­ysed, 5-1o per cent die when their breath­ing mus­cles be­come im­mo­bilised.”

In 1972 in T&T, a po­lio out­break forced the clo­sure of schools, saw the deaths of a few chil­dren and in­fa­mous­ly led to Car­ni­val be­ing post­poned that year. At present, re­gion­al vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 79 per cent, the low­est since 1994.

Eti­enne said based on an as­sess­ment of vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age, sur­veil­lance and oth­er in­di­ca­tors, the re­gion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for po­lio in the Amer­i­c­as in Ju­ly list­ed Brazil, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Haiti and Pe­ru at high risk for rein­tro­duc­ing po­lio. Ar­genti­na, The Ba­hamas, Bo­livia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Pana­ma, Suri­name and Venezuela are al­so at risk.

She said while COVID-19 chal­lenged health sys­tems by dis­rupt­ing ser­vices, hes­i­tan­cy against vac­cines grew, fu­elled by mis­in­for­ma­tion. She said an in­fant who re­ceives all po­lio vac­ci­na­tions has life­long pro­tec­tion. High lev­els of vac­ci­na­tion in a coun­try pre­vent the rein­tro­duc­tion of the dis­ease.

On the COVID-19 front, Eti­enne said the bur­den in the re­gion re­mains too high.

“Near­ly 1,000 days in­to the pan­dem­ic, we are los­ing over 4,000 peo­ple from COVID-19 across the Amer­i­c­as every week. We can­not ac­cept this as the new nor­mal.”

Al­though cas­es and deaths are falling, she said COVID-19 still ex­ists and there is no in­di­ca­tion it will go away soon. Eti­enne said the risks are sig­nif­i­cant if peo­ple al­low the virus to spread as ac­tive trans­mis­sion can lead to new vari­ants.

Mon­key­pox cas­es are al­so still ris­ing in parts of the re­gion de­spite trans­mis­sion de­clin­ing over the past two weeks in the US, Cana­da and Brazil. Eti­enne said oth­er coun­tries with large met­ro­pol­i­tan pop­u­la­tions saw an in­crease. There is an over­all 23 per cent in­crease in con­firmed cas­es in the Amer­i­c­as, which reg­is­tered five mon­key­pox deaths.