Injectible polio vaccine to be introduced from March'2016

Hyderabad: The State government is all set to introduce an injectible polio vaccine, in addition to the existing oral polio vaccine, as part of the universal immunisation programme in Telangana. In the third month of the infant, in addition to oral polio vaccine, the State government will also provide an Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV), which will be administered in the form of an injection.

The IPV administration, scheduled to start from March, 2016, is part of the end-game strategy of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which had urged India and other developing countries to



introduce IPV in its immunisation programme. The State and Central governments will be incurring an additional expenditure of Rs. 7.5 crore per year to administer the inactivated form of polio vaccine. 

The existing oral polio vaccine, which is cheap and easily administered, uses live but weakened form of the polio virus. However, live vaccine viruses can occasionally revert to virulence and there is always a chance of having a ‘live’ polio virus in the community. With IPV, however, there are no such risks because the virus is already deactivated.