Eradication of Polio in the World; Iran is at Risk for Reemerging of Polio: A Review of the Literature

Context: The wild polio virus is disrupted in all countries in the world, except Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two neighboring countries of Iran. Because of illegal migrations and some geographical, socioeconomic and managerial problems, Iran is exposed to reemerging of the disease. The current study aimed to assess the condition of the disease in Iran and propose preventive measures. Evidence Acquisition: Authors extracted and evaluated 33 relevant articles among 189 polio related abstracts. The key words were: polio, poliomyelitis, polio eradication, oral polio vaccine (OPV), inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), vaccination derived paralysis (VDP) and Iran. PubMed was used as an international site and IranMedex as a national motor search to assess the subject. Results: Since 2001, Iran is recognized as a polio free country by world health organization (WHO). Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two neighboring countries of Iran, are still infected with wild poliovirus. About 2.5 million Afghan refugees live in Iran and they communicate with their compatriots. Iran and its neighbors are different regarding vaccination coverage rates, rate of access to safe drinking water, political, security and cultural issues, health system and managerial indicators. Conclusions: Health managers in Iran should continuously monitor the coverage of vaccination with at least three doses of OPV in the level of over 95%, monitor the health of the Helmand River water which comes from Afghanistan to Iran, vaccinate the immigrants and replace bivalent vaccine (bOPV) with trivalent (tOPV) vaccine.