LONDON — For years, global health officials have used billions of drops of an oral vaccine in a remarkably effective campaign aimed at wiping out polio in its last remaining strongholds - typically, poor, politically unstable corners of the world.
Now, in a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there.
The original source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself.
Scientists have long known about this extremely rare phenomenon. That is why some countries have switched to other polio vaccines.