India will introduce injectable polio vaccine in its universal immunisation programme from October. This is a part of the World health Organisation’s polio endgame strategy. With its last reported case of a wild polio infection dating back to January 2011, India last year completed the three-year mandatory period that a country needs to stay free of fresh infections to be counted among countries that have eradicated the virus. “As part of the polio endgame strategy we will start administering injectable polio vaccine to children as part of the routine immunisation programme from October,” additional health secretary C K Mishra said. The vaccine also known as Inactivated Polio Virus (IPV) is administered as an intramuscular injection. It has been a long-standing demand of health experts that India should move to the injectable vaccine to minimise chances of vaccine-acquired polio infection.

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