Polio is an infectious disease caused by three types of viruses. It is dangerous because in case of illness, some of the patients develop irreversible paralysis of the respiratory muscles, which lead to death, or paralysis of the extremities (usually lower ones), which makes a person disabled. Before the invention of the polio vaccine, many children died from this terrible disease. The last polio epidemic was recorded in the mid-forties in the United States and it was stopped precisely by the massive use of the vaccine. Since then, the disease has lost its mass, but this is only due to the presence of a layer of the vaccinated population, since the virus itself has not gone away and constantly persists (is) in the nasopharynx and intestines of humans. That is why polio vaccines are so necessary.
Even if a person has been ill with polio, he still needs to be vaccinated, since after the disease immunity develops to only one form of the virus. Only vaccinations against polio can form an immunity against all three types of viruses at once.
Modern medicine uses the safest vaccinations against polio, either on the basis of an inactivated (killed) pathogen, administered subcutaneously, or containing a live but significantly attenuated pathogen administered through the mouth. They are called abbreviated IPV and OPV, respectively. In Russia, the most commonly used is OPV (oral polio vaccine), which gives the most stable and complete immunity. There is a strictly defined national immunization calendar (vaccination calendar) according to which polio vaccinations are given. Usually this is vaccination at 3, then at 4.5 months and at 6 months. Then comes the revaccination period of 18 months and again in 20 months. The last revaccination is done after reaching 14 years of age.
Complications after polio vaccination are extremely rare and are most often in an allergic reaction to the components of the vaccine. With the right treatment in time, they quickly stop. There is a fear (especially often this issue is raised by mothers under the influence of speculative media speculation) that vaccination can make a child disabled or even cause death. But the numbers suggest that the polio vaccine causes the disease in only 1 out of 2 and a half million cases, and even then the disease proceeds in a mild form. Against this background, the risk of contracting polio in a natural way, so to speak, is several tens of times higher.
However, even taking into account this negligible possibility of poliomyelitis, all children must undergo a thorough medical examination before vaccination. If there is reason to assume a weak immune system, then the doctor may give medical attention for vaccination against polio or, in some cases, use IPV.
Parents need to remember that, despite the negative remarks about vaccinations on the part of individual, often very distant from medicine, people and the populism of the media coming up with them, vaccinations should be done, as the harm from them is artificially inflated and complications after vaccination from poliomyelitis are much rarer than the actual risk of contracting the polio virus and getting, at best, irreversible persistent paralysis.
In addition, there is an order of the Ministry of Social Development of the Russian Federation that permits children not to be properly vaccinated from polio to be admitted to kindergartens. So if the child is planned to be sent to kindergarten, then he will have to be vaccinated against polio in any case.