[NVIC] Polio Eradication Faces Setback
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E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER
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"Protecting the health and informed consent rights of children since 1982."
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BL Fisher Note:
Is anyone investigating whether the reported cases of polio in highly
vaccinated regions of Africa are due to vaccine strain polio infection? The
repeated mass vaccination campaigns using live oral polio vaccine in
populations with malnutrition and a high rate of HIV, malaria, TB, and
other
immune system problems also raises the possibility that more children are
being harmed and killed by the vaccine than the occasional case of polio.
nd in light of the astonishing facts outlined in the new book "The Virus
and The Vaccine" by Bookchin and Schumacher, there is the possibility that
millions of African children are being exposed to the monkey virus, SV40,
with oral polio vaccine whose original seed stocks were contaminated. Go to
NVIC's website at www.nvic.org to learn how to get this important new book
about the live oral polio vaccine given to American children until 2000 and
now being used in eradication campaigns in Africa.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61984-2004Jun22.html
The Washington Post
Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page A16
Polio Eradication Faces Setback in Africa
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
The 16-year effort to eradicate polio from the globe is threatening to
unravel in Africa, with the report yesterday that a 10th country --
Sudan -- now harbors the disease after being free of it for three years.
Nigeria, where the current upsurge began, now has five times as many cases
of polio as it did this time last year, officials at the World Health
Organization in Geneva said. New cases have been found in 30 of its 37
states, with most in the Muslim north, where immunization efforts virtually
stopped last year because of political rivalries and rumors about the
vaccine's safety.
Africa's season of high transmission for the virus is about to begin,
raising the specter that thousands of children may contract the disease in
the year it was supposed to be extirpated.
"Right when it should have been disappearing during the low season, this
virus was gathering steam to come roaring out," R. Bruce Aylward, global
coordinator of the eradication campaign at WHO, said in a telephone
briefing.
Last winter, health ministers of the countries where polio remains endemic
won international agreement to step up the deadline for eradication to the
end of this year, a goal that may now be in jeopardy. David L. Heymann,
another WHO leader of the eradication effort, said, however, that despite
the setbacks, he and others are not ready to abandon that goal.
"I think there's still a chance. Africa did it before -- except in Nigeria
and Niger -- and there's no reason they can't do it again," he said.
Smallpox is the only human disease ever to be eradicated. The original
target date for polio eradication was pushed back several years ago from
2000 to 2005. Worldwide, there have been 333 cases this year, compared with
183 at this time last year.
Polio's appearance in Sudan and continuing spread in Nigeria has lent
urgency to a request last month by a group of African health ministers that
WHO help them run a coordinated 22-country immunization campaign this fall.
The campaigns will aim to vaccinate every child younger than 5 -- about 74
million -- during a one-week period in late October, and again a month
later. The vaccine is given as two drops of liquid in the mouth.
The fall campaign will cost about $100 million, Heymann said. About $25
million will be needed by early August.
"That's a good question," he said of where the money will come from. "We
are
working hard to get it."
About $3.1 billion has been spent on polio eradication since the initiative
was launched in 1988 at the suggestion of the service club Rotary
International, which has raised about $600 million.
Immunization rates generally need to be more than 80 percent to break the
person-to-person chain of virus transmission. They were briefly that high
several years ago in the African countries that were polio-free until the
recent outbreak. In some cases, however, the rates have now dropped to 50
percent or lower, WHO officials reported.
Only about 1 in every 200 polio cases results in the limb weakness or
paralysis that allow physicians and nurses to recognize the disease.
Consequently, finding a dozen cases implies that at least a thousand people
are harboring, and possibly transmitting, the virus.
The disease's appearance in Sudan, a country full of refugees living in
temporary camps, was especially worrisome because people in crowded
environments with poor sanitation are at greatest risk. Polio transmission
follows a "fecal-oral" route. The virus grows in the intestine and is
discharged in feces. It is then ingested by uninfected people, often
through
contaminated water.
Until a year ago, the only sub-Saharan countries where polio was found were
Nigeria and Niger. Since then, virus traceable to northern Nigeria has
caused cases in Burkina-Faso, Chad, Benin, Ivory Coast, Togo, Cameroon,
Ghana, Central African Republic and Botswana.
Three hundred cases of polio have been found in the region this year,
compared with 58 last year. Nigeria accounts for 257 cases, including 60
reported this week.
Countries with renewed infections are not considered "endemic" for polio
until numerous cases appear over a period of at least six months. Besides
Nigeria and Niger, the only other polio-endemic countries are Egypt,
Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
The Nigerian outbreak is centered in Kano, a state with about 3 million
children younger than 5 that last vaccinated widely in March 2003. Along
with several nearby states, Kano stopped vaccinating because of rumors that
the vaccine was part of a U.S. or Western plot against Muslims and would
cause infertility or AIDS. Some local leaders also used suspicions about
the
vaccine as a vehicle to resist the country's Christian-dominated national
government.
Recently, a delegation of 22 people from northern Nigeria went to
Indonesia,
where the vaccine was tested and a manufacturing plant was inspected, and
were convinced the vaccine was not contaminated.
Heymann said he spoke yesterday to Kano's governor, who assured him there
is
no longer any official resistance to resuming vaccination. Kano will use
vaccine made in Indonesia, a Muslim country, in future campaigns.
A public education and advertising campaign will begin soon, and Kano-wide
polio vaccination may resume in July or August, he said
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