http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/070927/x092711A.html

http://punchontheweb.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200709292332648

Vaccine infects 66 Nigerian children with polio
By Adeyeye Joseph
Published: Saturday, 29 Sep 2007
Sixty-six Nigerian children may have been infected with polio as a result of oral vaccines used in a countrywide polio vaccination programme about a year ago.

A team of international scientists, which used country-by-country polio reports to review polio cases worldwide, made this disclosure in the latest edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Review, a journal published by the United States Centre for Disease Control.

The scientists, drawn from the World Health Organisation’s Polio Eradication Initiative Department; the United States National Centre for Immunization and the Respiratory Diseases and the CDC, said the cases in Nigeria called for greater surveillance. Worldwide, the polio eradication campaign, an initiative that is sponsored by the WHO, the CDC, UNICEF, Rotary International and federal governments, have gulped over $5billion.

According to experts, polio cases caused by vaccines are described as Vaccine-Derived Polio Viruses cases and are divided into three categories: circulating VDPV, with transmission resulting in more than one patient with paralysis; immunodeficiencies VDPV, iVDPVs; and ambiguous VDPVs (aVDPVs) isolated from non-immunodeficient persons.

The report said 7311 VDPV cases were recorded between January 2006 and June 2007, with the 66 Nigerian cases being cVDPVs. “During January 2006—June 2007, vaccine-related isolates were observed in 7,311 specimens. The cVDPV outbreaks occurred in Myanmar (four cases of type 1) and Nigeria (66 cases of type 2). In 2006, two single-case importations of VDPVs from Nigeria were reported in Niger,” the report said.

Oral polio vaccines are no longer used in many developed countries. However, they are popular in developing countries because they are inexpensive and they could be administered by people who are not health professionals. Although cases of VDPVs leading to paralysis have been documented in one of every million oral dose, experts say the present cases of VDPVs are the largest ever.

Sources say the Federal Government may have decided not to make the cases public because it could hinder the progress of the National Polio Eradication project. However, international health experts, who have known about the cases for months and discussed it ever since, have flayed this decision saying it may be counter productive in the long run.

Answering our correspondent’s questions by e-mail, a professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, who has worked on polio eradication for the WHO 50 years and who also played a major role in the eradication of smallpox globally, Professor D.A. Henderson, said he had heard ‘rumours’ of the Nigerian cases before the CDC publication confirmed it.

“I have no personal information but I know government officials are working in all aspects of the programme and I would expect that they were very much involved in the investigations. I had heard rumours that there were cases and I had asked to be more fully informed but these are the first public reports that have been made available,” he said.

In 2004, attempts by the Federal Government to introduce polio vaccination in Northern states were met by stiff opposition as some people in the affected states claimed that the vaccines were harmful. The programme was only kicked off after tests conducted by government scientists showed that the vaccines were not harmful.

Contacted on the telephone on Friday, the Chief Press Secretary to the Minister of Health, Marshal Gundu, said he was not competent to speak on the matter.

“I cannot answer the questions. I am not in a position to answer the questions, the person who can is out of the country: she is Dr. Mrs. Adeyemi, a Director attached to the minister’s office,” Gundu, who told our correspondent that the Minister, Prof. Adenike Grange, was out of the country, said.

The report said that concerns over a likely VDPV epidemic had increased since the confirmation of a VDPV outbreak in Hispaniola in 2000 and that the cases in Nigeria had serious implications for the process of testing for VDPV.

It said, “The recent outbreak of cVDPV in Nigeria has implications for the GPLN procedure for VDPV detection. All poliovirus isolates are screened using two complementary ITD tests.

“This approach has successfully identified cVDPV outbreaks in five countries (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines) since 2000 but failed to flag multiple type 2 VDPVs from Nigeria and type 2 and type 3 VDPVs from Madagascar.”

I'm not surprised.

People in America are just starting to wake up to the dangers that vaccines can pose to our health. Remember, many of these vaccines are full of TOXINS. I feel terrible for those infected with polio now. Sad.