The World Health Organization announced in a statement that health officials in Burundi announced, on Friday, an outbreak of the polio virus, after confirming 8 cases, in the first outbreak of its kind in 3 decades.
The organization said that the confirmed cases are a 4-year-old child who did not receive the vaccine against the disease, and two other children who had contact with him in Isaly region, western Burundi.
And she continued, “In addition, 5 samples from environmental monitoring of wastewater confirmed the presence of poliovirus type 2.”
Poliovirus type 2 infection can occur when the weakened strain of the virus found in the oral polio vaccine (OPV) spreads among a population that has not been immunized for a long time.
