WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan retirement: GPEI offers sincere thanks for her ten-year leadership, which brought the world to the threshold of being polio-free.
Containment update: progress towards containment of poliovirus type 2 published.
“Coffee with Polio Experts”: a short video-chat with Dr Ousmane Diop, Coordinator of the Global Polio Laboratory Network, on the increasingly important role of environmental surveillance to help track down every last poliovirus strain.
Summary of newly-reported viruses this week: Syria – 5 new circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) isolated from acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) cases. Pakistan – 1 new wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) positive environmental sample. See country-specific section below, for more details.