Public Health Response to Imported Case of Poliomyelitis, Australia, 2007

Australia, along with 36 other countries in the Western Pacific Region, was declared free of poliomyelitis by the World Health Organization in October 2000. Yet, the persistence of wild poliovirus in the 4 remaining polio-endemic countries—Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan—poses a risk for its importation into all countries declared polio free. We describe the public health response and outcomes resulting from the importation of a wild poliovirus infection in Melbourne, Australia, in July 2007. This response, based on an assessment of the risk for transmission, included offering vaccination with inactivated polio vaccine to the contacts and placing the index patient in isolation and the household contacts in quarantine until consecutive fecal specimens were negative for poliovirus by culture. The experience gained from the polio importation event in Australia may assist other polio-free countries to prepare for, and respond to, a similar event. No secondary clinical cases resulted from this importation.