Question: Recently World Health Organisation (WHO) listed nOPV2 vaccine for emergency use. This vaccine will be used to addressed the rising cases of—
a) COVID-19
b) Polio
c) Ebola
d) Zika
Answer: (b)
Related Facts:-
- On 13 November 2020; World Health Organisation (WHO) listed the nOPV2 vaccine (Bio Farma, Indonesia) for emergency use.
- Vaccine nOPV2 has been developed by Indonesia’s national vaccine manufacturer Bio Farma.
- This vaccine will be used to address the rising cases of a vaccine-derived polio strain in a number of African and East Mediterranean countries.
- Countries in WHO’s Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions are also affected by these outbreaks.
- The emergency use listing, or EUL, is the first of its kind for a vaccine and paves the way for potential listing of COVID-19 vaccines.
- The world has made incredible progress toward polio eradication, reducing polio cases by 99.9% in the last 30 years.
- Researchers are now concentrated on last steps to ending this disease which are proving to be most difficult.
- Scientists faced this difficulty particularly with continuing outbreaks of circulating vaccine-derived polio viruses (cVDPVs).
- cVDPVs are rare and occur if the weakened strain of the poliovirus contained in the oral polio vaccine (OPV) circulates among under-immunized populations for a long time.
- Researchers speculated that, If not enough children are immunized against polio, the weakened virus can pass between individuals and over time genetically revert to a form that can cause paralysis.
- 2 cVDPVs are currently the most prevalent form of the vaccine-derived virus.
By – Rajesh Tripathi
Links:-
https://www.who.int/news/item/13-11-2020-first-ever-vaccine-listed-under-who-emergency-use