#Polio is spreading in Britain for the first time in nearly 40 years, health officials have warned, as they declared a national incident and urged people to make sure they are vaccinated. Britain was proclaimed polio-free in 2003 and the last wild case was detected in 1984.
The current outbreak is the first transmission event since the 1980s. The UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) announced that a vaccine-derived polio virus had been detected in sewage from North and East London in Feb and April, suggesting spread between individuals.
Health experts believe the virus was probably imported from an individual who had recently been given an oral polio vaccine containing a live virus, which was then shed in faeces, entering London’s sewerage system.
Although the occasional case of vaccine-derived polio is found each year, it is the first time that a strain has been found to linger in the system for months, suggesting it is spreading and mutating over time.
It is likely to have come from countries using oral vaccination programmes, such as Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and health officials say it could be spreading in a small family community.
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