Polio eradication this week:

• In Pakistan, FATA remains the major poliovirus reservoir, threatening progress achieved elsewhere in the country and in neighbouring Afghanistan. An analysis of vaccination status of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) cases suggests that more than half of children in FATA remain under-immunised, with as many as 40% never having received a single dose of OPV.
• In Israel, an SIA with OPV is being conducted this week, targeting 200,000 children in the south. The move follows isolation of WPV1 from sewage samples collected from 20 sampling sites since February. No cases of paralytic polio have been reported. While Israel has high vaccination coverage with inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), the objective of the OPV SIA is to boost mucosal immunity levels to rapidly interrupt virus circulation.