Polio: Peshawar reports fourth case

Country’s reported total jumps to 50, officials concerned over effectiveness of Sehat ka Insaf.


Asad Zia April 24, 2014
Country’s reported total jumps to 50, officials concerned over effectiveness of Sehat ka Insaf.

PESHAWAR:


With the curtains drawn on the three-month-long Sehat ka Insaf immunisation campaign in Peshawar, a new polio case has emerged from the district, raising concern among health officials that the virus is still thriving.


Six-month-old Zainab, resident of Ahmedkhel, is the latest victim, pushing the country’s reported total to 50 in 2014.

According to an official of the provincial health department, Zainab had been vaccinated during Sehat ka Insaf but still contracted the virus.

“Zainab’s diagnosis has caused an alarm among health officials because despite the government’s massive expenditure on the campaign the polio virus still exists in Peshawar,” he said.

The health official added an investigation has been initiated to identify the strain of the virus and the area it is genetically linked to. Dr Imtiaz, the focal person of the Chief Minister’s Polio Monitoring Cell, confirmed to The Express Tribune that Zainab had been vaccinated four times during Sehat ka Insaf.

Commenting on the virus’s presence in the district despite the immunisation campaign, Dr Imtiaz said, “After the results of the latest environmental water samples collected from Shaheen Muslim Town and Larama UCs a month ago are available, we will be able to confirm its presence.”

Incidentally, in the press briefing after the 11th round of the campaign, Minister for Health Shahram Tarakai had claimed that Peshawar had been cleansed of polio. He further said even though the last environmental water samples tested positive for the virus, the strain was genetically linked to Afghanistan and Bara, Khyber Agency.

So far, 39 polio cases have been reported from Fata, eight from K-P and three from Sindh.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 24th, 2014.

COMMENTS (6)

Karim Khan | 9 years ago | Reply

To those reading wikipedia and WHO-sponsored media reports, OPV was stopped on account of the paralysis caused by it. To say VAPP is incidental is a proof your ignorance. take some time to read original research and not wiki (where anyone can log in to edit an entry) that uses "official" sources promoting the vaccine. Here is a quote from Journal of American Medical Association (2004) about changing OPV to IPV:

"To reduce the VAPP burden, national vaccination policy changed in 1997 from reliance on OPV to options for a sequential schedule of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) followed by OPV. In 2000, an exclusive IPV schedule was adopted."

And if you can read English, you can see why the vaccine was stopped - to stop the paralysis it was causing.

And It is not one case in Nigeria; it was an epidemic with over 300 children crippled for life by the virus derived from oral polio vaccine. The epidemic peaked in 2007 but was studied from 2005 to 2010. And surely there were no further studies (for obvious reasons) or more cases would have come to surface. And Nigeria is not an exception, India in 2012 reported at least 45K cases of VAPP.

Scientifically, there is no way of proving that OPV (or any vaccine for that matter) eradicated polio. Read Dr. Suzanne Humphries thoroughly researched book "Dissolving Illusions" with original hospital records to educate yourselves on what really caused the epidemic dieases to subside.

And ethically, even if a small number of kids are being crippled, it is still ethical to knowingly give them the vaccine without letting the parents decide. Do these polio teams tell parents that the vaccine they are going to give the kids have caused polio (aka VAPP) in thousands of children across the world?

Please wake up and read. Ignorance is more dangerous than any disease. No vaccine can save you from it.

gp65 | 9 years ago | Reply Sometimes kids who have been vaccinated also contract polio because of factors such as bad drinking whater due to which they get diarrhoea and do not retain the vaccine for long enough in the body for it to take effect. Focusing on quality of water and oral rehydration therapy were other aspects of polio eradication program in India after similar results were observed i.e. people who had been administered the vaccine contracted the disease. The problem has to be fought holistically. @Karim Khan: ORal polio has been stopped in USA in 2000 because they have not had a case of polio for seve3ral decades. In countries where polio is endemic, oral vaccine is the most effective antidote. You conveniently mention the one incident in Nigeria while ignoring the dramatic success of eradicating polio in India where oral vaccine was the primary tool.
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