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- Do you have or have you ever stored samples of poliovirus?
- Do you have or have you ever stored samples that might potentially harbour such virus (e.g. faecal or throat swab samples)?
The laboratory containment of poliovirus is a vital step towards Australia receiving World Health Organisation certification as a polio-free nation. The WHO is aiming to globally certify global eradication of poliovirus by 2005. To ensure this happens, the Department needs to make contact with all organisations in Australia that store all existing sources of poliovirus.
Who should contact us? As Australia's last reported case of locally acquired poliomyelitis was in 1972, the only known sources of poliovirus now remaining are within laboratories. These sources need to be appropriately contained and identified for the purposes of the national inventory.
The Department needs to contact laboratories that may hold:
- stocks of poliovirus;
- reference strains of poliovirus;
- potentially infectious materials such as clinical samples (e.g. faecal samples, throat swabs);
- environmental samples (e.g. water or sewage samples);
- research materials (e.g. wild poliovirus capsid); and
- untyped enterovirus.
This article was published in Communicable Diseases Intelligence Volume 26, No 2, June 2002
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This issue - Vol 26, No 2, June 2002
Communicable Diseases Intelligence