Mucosal Immunity

The results of this study could help resolve the 50-year-old controversy, dating back to the time of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, over vaccine choice. "The answer is now very clear," explained Dr. Roland Sutter, WHO's coordinator for research and product development, polio operations and research. "Both vaccines complement one another and should be used to interrupt the final chains of transmission to attain a polio-free world in the most rapid and effective way possible."

"The global eradication effort is at a critical crossroad," continued Dr. Jafari. "Endemic polio is increasingly geographically restricted to populations in insecure and inaccessible areas. Yet the virus in these areas persists with incredible tenacity and threatens the increasingly vulnerable populations in polio-free countries with weak or conflict-affected health systems."

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recently announced that inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) will be available to low-income countries for as little as $1 a dose, as global health groups push for introducing the vaccine into routine immunization programs by the end of next year.

The Feb 28 announcement was made the same day the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an updated position paper on polio vaccines, calling for using IPV to guard against the possible risk of re-emergence of type 2 polio after the withdrawal of oral type 2 vaccines.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) chimed in on the same day with recommendations for detecting and controlling polio in Europe, in response to the recent detection of wild-type polio viruses in Israel and an outbreak of the disease in war-torn Syria.