GENEVA: The World Health Organization said it had prequalified another novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2), a step it said would speed efforts to eradicate the disease.
Prequalification certifies that the vaccine meets international standards for quality and safety, enabling UN agencies such as UNICEF to procure and distribute it for immunization campaigns.
The nOPV2 shot is designed to be more genetically stable than older oral polio vaccines, lowering the risk of triggering new outbreaks while helping to stop transmission, the WHO said.
The move follows a pledge by global leaders in December to provide $1.9 billion to support eradication efforts, aiming to protect 370 million children each year despite recent budget cuts.
Polio, a disabling and potentially life-threatening disease, has been wiped out in many regions but continues to circulate.
A new vaccination campaign that began in southern Malawi this month is another reminder that the world has not yet eradicated the ancient disease.
Dr. Joe Collins Opio, UNICEF’s Malawi chief of health, said the vaccination campaign would first focus on children in eight districts and would ultimately expand into a national effort across the country, and called on everyone to “be part of the response.”
Malawi’s deputy health minister, Charles Chilambula, was among the officials promoting the vaccination drive.
Health officials believe they came close several times, including five years ago, when just five cases of the natural polio virus were reported globally.
But a WHO report said that there were 38 cases of the natural polio virus between January and October 2025 — all in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two countries where it remains endemic — and another 151 cases of a vaccine-derived polio virus strain in 13 countries.
Those vaccine-derived cases have overtaken natural polio virus cases in recent years, and complicated the eradication effort as one of a number of missteps in the global fight.
They occur when the weakened live virus in oral polio vaccines mutates into a form capable of causing new outbreaks.
That’s the problem in Malawi, which reported last month that it had detected a vaccine-derived Type 2 polio virus strain in sewage in the southern city of Blantyre, prompting health authorities to launch a new immunization campaign using a modified vaccine.
Under WHO regulations, Malawi was required to declare an outbreak upon confirming traces of the polio virus.
It involves 1.7 million doses being administered to children in schools and delivered door-to-door in some of the city’s neighborhoods by health workers.
In an attempt to reassure people, Chilambula said the doses will protect against the vaccine-derived strain that has been detected in environmental samples in Blantyre.
Malawi’s Health Ministry said it’s using the novel oral polio vaccine, designed to prevent circulating vaccine-derived Type 2 outbreaks.
“It’s very important that we do the vaccine now, because it also deals with this virus which we have detected,” Chilambula said.
Despite statistics now showing more children contracting polio viruses originating in vaccines than in the wild, global health authorities claim a bigger victory against polio.
Wild polio virus cases have decreased by more than 99 percent since 1988, according to the WHO, and the number of endemic countries has fallen from 125 to two, largely due to vaccines.
But the end goal — the eradication of polio like smallpox — has been elusive.
Malawi became a country of concern for polio again in 2022 when a child contracted the wild polio virus, the first case in the southern African nation for 30 years.
Last month’s announcement of traces of a vaccine-derived strain is another setback.
