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Alert

Poliovirus can spread where vaccination rates are low. The best way to prevent polio is to maintain high immunity across the population through safe and effective vaccination. All individuals who are unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated against polio should be vaccinated according to the recommended childhood and adult immunization schedules. If polio vaccination status is unknown, and vaccination records cannot be located, it is recommended to complete the polio vaccination series with inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), especially before travel to destinations considered at increased risk for polio.

PLEASE NOTE: Blood tests to assess immunity for people with no or questionable documentation of poliovirus vaccination are not recommended because of increasingly limited availability of antibody testing against type 2 poliovirus.

 

Polio

Health care providers, administrators, and clinical laboratory directors should report confirmed or suspect cases immediately to their Local Health Department by telephone.

Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a very contagious disease caused by the poliovirus which lives in the throat and digestive tract and invades the nervous system. The virus is found in the stool of infected people. In its most severe form, it causes nerve injury leading to paralysis (cannot move your body), difficulty breathing and sometimes death. People become infected with polio by swallowing the virus. This can happen when infected people do not wash their hands properly after using the bathroom and then touch objects or food that may be placed in another person’s mouth. There is no cure, but there are safe and effective vaccines to prevent polio.

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