The following websites and resources reveal the need to continue the battle to defeat the poliovirus and detail the commitment being put towards this end.
General information about the The National Immunisation Program, which aims to increase national immunisation rates by funding free vaccination programs and communicating information about immunisation to the general public and health professionals.
Poliomyelitis (polio) is a serious disease, caused by a virus. It can be prevented with immunisation. All children and adults should receive the vaccine. If you are not immunised, you could contract polio if your food, water or hands are contaminated with the faeces of an infected person.
NCIRS aims to inform policy and planning for immunisation services in Australia and to support initiatives in the surveillance of vaccine preventable diseases, including disease surveillance, vaccine coverage and immunisation adverse events. NCIRS has developed fact sheets on aspects of vaccination for immunisation providers and interested members of the community.
VIDRL has national reference laboratory designations to the Commonwealth Department of Health for polio and enteroviruses, measles, viral haemorrhagic fevers and smallpox. The Australian Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) clinical surveillance program was established in 1995. Since 2000, the AFP surveillance program has been coordinated at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory. The referral of faecal specimens from AFP cases throughout Australia through the clinical surveillance program facilitates the detection of cases of poliomyelitis potentially due to vaccine associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP), circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) or imported wild-type poliovirus.
