The Kenya Medical Research Institute yesterday destroyed the remaining stockpiles of one of the strains of poliovirus.
The virus, medically known as circulating vaccine derived poliovirus type 2, was stored at the institutes’s polio laboratory as at yesterday, beating the global deadline by a day.
The Global Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication has set the elimination of the poliovirus type 2 for February 4.
The move is meant to avoid the possibilities of the virus by accident or deliberate reintroduction after it was declared non-existent across the world on September 20 last year.
In an elaborate exercise held at the Kemri headquarters in Nairobi, 20 vials of the virus was burnt.
This marks the end of the virus in Kenya and the horn of Africa where its last strains were stored.
However, there are possibilities of the virus being introduced by wild animals.
Kenya has in the past reported cases of the virus being ‘imported’ from neighbouring countries, such as Somalia and South Sudan.
There are three types of poliovirus, 1, 2 and 3.
Type 1 and 3 are the remaining endemic strains, currently restricted only to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Both are highly infectious and cause paralytic polio.
Type 1 is the most pervasive strain of poliovirus and type 3 is at low levels.
During the destruction, the virus in vials (small glass containers) stored in freezers were killed after being subjected to 121 derees centigrade.
The vials with the dead virus were later burnt to ashes in an incinerator.
The ash will be stored at the Kenya National Archives.
Kemri acting director Dr Gerald Mkoji said polio eradication has reached a “critical stage”, where Africa no longer has an endemic country.
Nigeria was the last country in Africa to be declared free of polio last year.
