Polio - The old foe and new challenges: An update for clinicians.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative since 1988 has seen the impact of poliovirus decline from frequent global epidemics in the early 1900s to being now only endemic in two countries today. Global vaccination programmes and surveillance for the disease have resulted in the landmark eradication of two of the three poliovirus strains in the last 5 years. Australia continues to contribute to global surveillance efforts for the disease via the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit and the Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance Network, which aim to detect cases of acute flaccid paralysis in children, the key clinical feature of poliomyelitis.

Acute flaccid myelitis - has it gone unrecognised in Australian children?

We have identified a previously unrecognised cluster of a newly recognised condition - acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) - among acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) cases identified by the Australian Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance Network (PAEDS) 2007-2017. In the 12 months before and after detection of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) from a single AFP case in April 2016, 24 of 97 notified cases of AFP were found to be clinically compatible with AFM; of these 24 cases, ten, clustered in early 2016, met magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) criteria for AFM. Detection of emerging enteroviruses requires collection of respiratory, cerebrospinal fluid and stool specimens, and should be routine practice for all AFP cases.