Water, Environmental Surveillance and Molecular Epidemiology of Poliovirus in India

Abstract

Poliomyelitis has appeared in epidemic form, become endemic on a global scale and has been reduced to near elimination, all within the span of documented medical history. Environmental surveillance of poliovirus (PV) means monitoring of PV transmission in human populations by examining environmental specimens supposedly contaminated by human faeces. The rationale for surveillance is based on the fact that PV-infected individuals, whether presenting with disease symptoms or not, shed large amounts of PV in the faeces for several weeks. As the morbidity: infection ratio of PV infection is very low, this fact contributes to the sensitivity of PV surveillance, which under optimal conditions can be better than that of the standard acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) surveillance. The World Health Organization (WHO) has included environmental surveillance of PV in the new Strategic Plan of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative for years 2010-2012 to be increasingly used in PV surveillance, supplementing AFP surveillance.