In a news release, WHO stated that Malawi′s Ministry of Health decided to vaccinate Malawi an children under 5 years of age after a three-year-old girl in Lilongwe, Malawi developed acute flaccid paralysis. 

As per reports, the girl was infected with a WPV1 strain which is a naturally occurring poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) and is still in the endemic state in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The virus was confirmed from her stool sample sequenced by the National Institute of Communicable Disease (NICD) in South Africa and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. 

The ministry, in partnership with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations International Children′s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) will be carrying out the drive and supplying 80 million supplemental doses of bivalent oral polio vaccines to over 23 million children in the five African countries by July, including Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia. (Medscape Medical News, March 29, 2022)