Panacea Biotec has launched polio vaccine POLPROTEC in Nigeria to help combat the spread of the debilitating disease in the country, one of the last nations still to eradicate the virus.

To make the vaccine easily available, Panacea is partnering Emzor Pharma, which has a strong footprint across Nigeria.

During the launch, Panacea and Emzor made a public declaration of a Joint Polio-Free Mission “to contribute towards achieving the goal of global polio eradication and to ensure that no child will ever again be paralysed by Wild Polio Virus (WPV) or Vaccine-Derived Polio Virus (VDPV).”

This would be achieved by providing a complete portfolio of Oral Polio Vaccines (OPV), Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) and IPV-based combination vaccine at an affordable price.

The two firms noted that this is the first time IPV is being launched in Nigeria and that India has slowly moved out of PAIN (Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria), referred to as the only four polio endemic countries in the world.

India has not registered any case of polio in the last one year.

“So the onus is on us to defeat polio in Nigeria and this requires a lot of deliberation and commitment from each one of us,” Ms Dorothy O Esangbedo, the President of the Paediatric Association of Nigeria (PAN), said during the launch at Ile Ife town near Nigeria’s economic capital of Lagos.

“The initiative of IPV along with OPV will limit transmission of endemic Wild Polio Virus (WPV) type 1 and type 3 and will totally overcome the inherent limitations of OPV such as: Vaccine Derived polio Virus (VDPV), Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis(VAPP) and variable Vaccine Efficacy (VE),” said Ms Shafi Kolhapure of Panacea Biotec.

In 1988, the World Health Assembly launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative which was effective in reducing the number of polio cases worldwide but reinfection from countries such as Nigeria saw the endemic rebound in 2009 and 2010.

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