On Sun, 3 Feb 2019 at 10:07, Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 3, 2019, 9:37 AM Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected] > wrote: > > > > > WHO has defined vaccine protocols that address your concern > > > > "The politics of polio" by Dr. Pushpa Bhargava an eminent microbiologist > who returned his Padma Bhushan in protest. > > > https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/The-politics-of-polio/article15239258.ece > > Ground reality is messy and corrupt. > I find this whole anti-vax movement rather strange since I have lived in communities where polio was prevalent - and I have seen people from a couple of generations crippled and maimed with the after effects of polio (and not the unseen others who died for the lack of a vaccine). I know one guy whose mother was unable to vaccinate him due to a death in the family on the vaccination day at the primary health centre, and then forgot about it. The guy fell sick in his 20s believing he had been vaccinated, and it took very long for the doctors to diagnose polio, and eventually he did get treated and recover, but has a terribly degenerative bone condition on his spine because of the polio attack. OPV has largely wiped out polio in most such places. Now the reason OPV failed in some cases (not mentioned in that article) is for other reasons: 1) when you had communities of people mixing with and without vaccines - it is possible under some circumstances for the disease to spread from a recently vaccinated person (typically via stool or sneezing) to a unvaccinated person; this has been known some time - and the US switched back to IPVs because they have a large number of people who don't want any vaccines who were at risk because of OPV ( I just hope those people dont travel to india or any african countries ). 2) substandard vaccines, this is more common than you think - especially when there is bulk ordering of millions of dosages of vaccines. those UP vaccine deaths were most probably due to substandard vaccines. I see anti-vax as really a first world problem for people who have the means to procure aseptic food and environments, and treat themselves in proper hospitals when there is the eventuality of disease. Polio is just one of the many killers for the less fortunate communities i am talking about (i saw a place where a rota virus killed every other child that was born in the 6 month period that i was there, only because the vaccine was not freely available at the primary health centre), and they are more than happy to get the vaccine since it clearly improved survivability. I do see parents in my son's first-world-like school who have not vaccinated their kids with *anything* on the basis of some celebrity video or misleading article talking about the disease in statistical terms.
