Meeting Report - WHO informal consultation on revision of recommendations to assure the quality, safety and efficacy of oral poliovirus vaccines

Overview

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been developing international standards for biologicals including vaccines for more than 70 years which serve as the basis for setting up national requirements and for WHO prequalification of vaccines. The last revision of the WHO Recommendations for oral poliomyelitis vaccines (OPV) was made in 2012, published in WHO Technical Report Series No. 980, as Annex 2. Since then, there have been new developments in OPV (in particular novel OPV) and advances in vaccine production, quality control technology such as High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) and global polio eradication strategies including policy documents related to poliovirus containment which raised a need for updating the WHO Recommendations document. A WHO informal consultation to discuss revision of the recommendations to assure the quality, safety and efficacy of oral poliovirus vaccines was held, virtually, during 15-17 November 2021. Participants included worldwide experts and representatives of stakeholders including academic institutions, industry, regulatory authorities, and other international health agencies.