Rare polio case highlights how hard it will be to keep polio gone once it’s eradicated
An incident that took place at a Dutch polio vaccine production facility late last year is a critical reminder of a major challenge the world faces if and when polio eradication is completed: How do we keep polio from re-establishing itself, given that laboratories and vaccine manufacturers in numerous countries will need to continue to work with the viruses?
An employee of Bilthoven Biologicals in the Netherlands somehow became infected with type 3 polio, one of the two strains of polioviruses that have been eradicated. The company, owned by the Serum Institute of India, makes inactivated polio vaccines, using polioviruses that are killed in the production process.
