The 2022 Malawi Polio outbreak

Abstract

After 30 years of no polio cases reported in Malawi, on 17th February 2022, the government declared a polio outbreak following a confirmed 4-year-old child case of the disease in the nation’s capital, Lilongwe.

This was the first case of wild poliovirus in Africa in more than five years after Africa was declared free of indigenous wild polio in August 2020. Laboratory analysis showed that the strain detected in Malawi was linked to that which had been circulating in Sindh Province of Pakistan.