As India moves towards zero-polio status next year, the Union Health Ministry has initiated a gigantic task of scouting all laboratories — including private diagnostic research centres to find if they were storing wild poliovirus infectious materials or potential infectious materials.
After the identification, wild polioviruses containing materials has to be destroyed or segregated and stored under appropriate bio-safety conditions to prevent reintroducing the deadly virus from labs to the community, said Jagdish Deshpande, Director of Mumbai-based Entrovirus Research Centre, ICMR.
“To achieve zero-polio status, it is must that no polio case is reported in consecutive three years. For the last two years, there has not been a single case of wild polio from the country. Therefore, certification of SEAR depends on India reaching zero-polio status for three consecutive years plus satisfactory laboratory containment action.
“Once that happens we would join the nine countries in the Southeast Asia region (SEAR) of the WHO which have already achieved the zero-polio status,” he explained.
Deshpande is the member of the task force constituted by the Ministry for laboratory containment of wild polioviruses.
To achieve that containment of laboratories is a must. Wild polioviruses may be present in a variety of clinical materials such as feces or soil material in the path labs.
“There are a large number of laboratories — registered and unregistered — involved in clinical medicine, biomedical research and development, pharmaceuticals and vaccine manufacture and testing of biological materials,” the official added.
Of these, a number of laboratories are directly working on viruses causing respiratory, enteric and neurological diseases.
“The work on laboratory containment of wild polio viruses is already underway. We are in the midst of preparing an inventory list of the all biomedical laboratories to identify those with wild poliovirus infectious materials. They will be encouraged destruction of all unnecessary materials,” the official noted.
All the States, through the proper channel, have been asked to submit the list. They have been asked to fill the forms in this regard.
The final national inventory for containment will be finally submitted, along with supporting documentation, to the National Certification Committee on Polio Eradication to be forwarded to the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia. It will after reviewing the documents will take a call on whether or not give the tag of zero-polio status to the region that includes India.