After finding a case of acute polio, Peru releases an epidemiological warning.

The health authorities of Peru issued an epidemiological alert for all health services in the country after having detected a case of acute poliomyelitis in a one-year-old baby in the Amazon region of Loreto, official sources reported on Wednesday.

The National Center for Epidemiology, Prevention and Disease Control (CDC) of the Ministry of Health (Minsa) indicated that the alert seeks to “strengthen the epidemiological surveillance and intensify the active search for cases, as well as implement prevention and control measures to mitigate the impact of damage to public health in the country”.

This case “corresponds to a one-year-old indigenous male infant whose guardians chose to postpone vaccination” against the disease and presented fever, cough and weakness of the lower limbs, “for which a case of acute flaccid paralysis was suspected and the sample was taken,” the alert detailed.

The sample was sent to the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, in Brazil, from where a result was received on Tuesday “with isolation of a type 1 derived poliovirus.”

The CDC explained that “ambiguous vaccine-derived polioviruses (aVDPV) are vaccine-derived viruses that have been isolated from people without known immunodeficiency or isolated from sewage whose source of origin is as yet unknown.”

“In the country, The last case of wild poliovirus was reported in the jurisdiction of the Diresa (Regional Health Directorate) Junín in the year 1991, receiving the certification of a Polio-free country by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO),” he said.

In this regard, the Minsa remarked, in a statement, that “Peru has been free of wild poliovirus for 32 years” and maintained that the current “is an isolated case of a child without vaccine against polio and others from the Regular Scheme, coming from a native community of the province of Datem del Marañón”, in Loreto.

“Polio, caused by the wild poliovirus that causes outbreaks and epidemics, is on its way to being eradicated from the world, and in Peru there is no case of this type,” he emphasized before noting that “exceptionally, cases of paralysis may appear flaccid disease caused by the derived vaccine virus, which is a consequence of virus mutation in places with low vaccination coverage.

“At the momentthe child is stable and is being constantly evaluated by a team of Minsa specialists, and a follow-up neurological evaluation is being scheduled. The case is under investigation,” he reported.

For his part, the director of the CDC, César Munayco, told the radio station RPP that “The investigation still needs to be done, because it is a whole investigation process that is carried out to be able to define well what this case is about”. Munayco commented that a multidisciplinary team has already left to identify the places where the child has moved and look for other possible cases, as well as to carry out a “vaccination sweep” in the area.