Two polio cases have been confirmed in western Ukraine, the first to be recorded in Europe since 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.
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Recently, two polio cases have been observed in Ukraine, which is quite an alarming news, since this marks the return of potent strains of the polio virus.
It is likely large numbers of other children have also been infected without developing symptoms.
WHO said the outbreak occurred because only half of Ukrainian children are immunized against the disease. One is four years old, and the other only 10 months old. Although the outbreak-affected area borders with Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, polio immunization rates in these countries are above 90%-making it unlikely that the virus could travel far. Sometimes it can mutate and start to spread if immunisation levels are too low.
She adds that though these are just two cases of polio, but this does not mean that the story ends here.
The Ukrainian health ministry conceded that the ex-Soviet country had struggled to get children vaccinated against the crippling virus since 2008. Asymptomatic cases are big dangers of the ailment.
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Wild polio leads to paralysis in one in every 200 infections, while the vaccine-derived strain tends to be milder.
