Annual report of the Australian National Poliovirus Reference Laboratory, 2006

The Australian National Poliovirus Reference Laboratory (NPRL), located within the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory, is the national laboratory for Australia, the Pacific Islands and Brunei Darussalam, and is accredited by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the Regional Reference Laboratory for the WHO Western Pacific Region. The NPRL, in collaboration with the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit, co-ordinates surveillance for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), the major clinical presentation of poliovirus infection. After classification of AFP cases by the Polio Expert Committee, the non-polio AFP rate for Australia in 2006 was 1.1, meeting the WHO surveillance requirement of detecting more than one AFP case per 100,000 children aged less than 15 years. During 2006, 80 specimens were referred to the NPRL, 59 from AFP cases and 21 from other sources. Poliovirus type 3 was isolated from two patients without AFP and the isolates were characterised as Sabin-like using WHO accredited methodologies. Echovirus 30 was isolated from two cases of AFP and coxsackievirus B5 and adenovirus were isolated from individual cases. During 2006, 1,998 cases of poliomyelitis due to wild poliovirus infection were reported world-wide, of which, only 6.8% (127) were due to importation of wild poliovirus.