aDivision of Vaccine Preventable Disease Control and National Immunization Program, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Osong, Korea
bKorea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Osong, Korea
© 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
■ Because the Republic of Korea maintains a high immunization rate and has generally good sanitation, a poliomyelitis outbreak is unlikely to occur in the country.
■ However, a single detected case of poliovirus infection would be considered as an outbreak and would initiate activation of the response plan.
■ All decisions on the response to poliovirus detection will be made at the national level.
■ Regular, timely and comprehensive information sharing with the public, relevant partners and international society is important.
■ Information about the patient, e.g. age and sex.
■ Clinical course and laboratory testing.
■ Immunization status of the patient.
■ Exposure history (1): residence in or travel to a polio endemic country or to a country that has recently reported transmission of poliovirus or vaccine-derived poliovirus.
■ Exposure history (2): contact with persons recently immunized with OPV, or with persons who have recently traveled to a polio endemic country or contact with persons who have traveled to a country that has recently reported importation of polio cases or vaccine-derived poliovirus or that uses OPV.
■ Household contacts have the greatest risk of being exposed to poliovirus and should be isolated at home until it is proved that they are not infected. Stool specimens should be taken at least 3 days after first exposure to the index patient. Contacts can be released from quarantine when two stool samples taken 24–48 hours apart are negative for poliovirus.
■ For health care workers who have been in close contact with the index patient and who have no recorded immunization history, or who are not yet completely vaccinated, two stool samples should be taken 24–48 hours apart, the first being taken at least 3 days after first exposure to the index patient.
■ Public contacts will be provided with information on poliovirus infection, hygiene and vaccination. They will be informed that they might have been in contact with poliovirus and advised that they should immediately consult a public health center if they develop any symptom that could be attributed to poliovirus infection.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Year | 1960–65 | 1966–70 | 1971–75 | 1976–80 | 1981–83 | 1984–2010 |
Cases | 6541 | 1088 | 337 | 137 | 9 | 0 |