World Polio Day 2025 - Social media collection

A key factor in the success of polio eradication is a rapid and effective response to any poliovirus detection event or polio outbreak caused by the importation of poliovirus or the emergence of a vaccine-derived poliovirus.

To guide countries on the development of a response plan for a poliovirus or polio outbreak event, the World Health Organization (WHO) prepared a document on standard operating procedures (PNT), incorporating lessons learned from previous outbreak response efforts and describing guidelines for responding to detection events and outbreaks caused by serotype poliovirus 1 , 2 and 3. Based on THE SOPs developed by WHO, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) prepared this document, considering all the key elements of a response plan and is aimed at the technical teams of the countries of the Region, who will coordinate the national response to poliovirus detection events or polio outbreaks.

Standard Operating Procedures: Responding to a poliovirus event or outbreak

Check List - Components for the National Plan

This document sets out strategic guidelines for responding to events or outbreaks caused by any type of poliovirus, however, its recommendations focus primarily on the response to type 2 polioviruses, in the first 12 months since the withdrawal of OPV2, from May 2016 to April 2017, and are mainly aimed at countries that made use of the trivalent oral polio vaccine against polio , in the 12 months prior to the change in tOPV to bOPV.

Whereas in the response to the detection of poliovirus, common steps should be taken to any type of poliovirus and specific steps, depending on the strain detected and its origin; this document has been organized according to the type of poliovirus detected and the source of the sample into three large blocks:

• Poliovirus type 2,
• Poliovirus type 1 o 3 and
• Any poliovirus in environmental samples.