[india-drug] Pulse Polio under scrutiny (2)

["Dr Gopal Dabade" <dabadedr@yahoo.com>]

Pulse Polio under scrutiny (2)
***************************

Another article forwarded by:Dr GOPAL DABADE
   
  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2122225.cms
  9th October 2006
  TIMES OF INDIA, Editorial. 
  
Drop That Paralyses 
by Anant Phadke

Union health secretary Prasanna Hota's glorification of the polio eradication programme (TOI, October 6) takes no cognizance of some basic facts. Polio is not such a priority issue as to spend hundreds of crores every year. 

Yet the Union government's 2006-07 Budget has the following provisions Rs 1,004 crore for pulse polio, Rs 327 crore for routine immunization, and Rs 184 crore for tuberculosis control. 

And, the context: 1.5 crore TB cases and four lakh annual TB deaths compared with an estimated 20,000 polio cases and less than 500 deaths annually when the polio eradication drive was launched. 

This lopsided priority is justified on the grounds that once polio is eradicated, like small pox, polio vaccination would be stopped; this would save thousands of crores in future. However, worldwide eradication of polio is not our priority, but that of the developed countries. 

Though polio has disappeared in those countries many years back, they must continue polio vaccination till polio is eradicated worldwide. Polio eradication would mean an annual saving on vaccination of $333 million and $230 million for European Union countries and the US, respectively. 

Blinded by a narrow biomedical approach, the temptation of eradicating polio, and perhaps guided by the interests of oral polio vaccine (OPV) manufacturers in the US, our experts believe that polio can be eradicated with OPV even in absence of improvements in nutrition, public sanitation and social backwardness.    

This OPV-based eradication strategy has three fundamental problems. First, it is virtually impossible to vaccinate every child in each developing country, given that there are various forms of social backwardness and social conflict. 

Second, it is impossible to ensure that in developing countries all children who receive OPV would develop immunity against polio. During last few years, 30-60 per cent of polio cases have received more than three doses of OPV. The wild virus would continue to circulate among this pool of vaccinated but unprotected population. 

Unlike in the case of smallpox, for every clinical case, there are a thousand sub clinical polio infections, which are the source of wild virus for this unprotected population. That is why polio reappeared in more than 10 countries after bringing down the incidence to zero.


Dr Gopal Dabade,
57, Tejaswinagar,
Dharwad 580 002
Tel 0836-2461722
Cell (0)9448862270
www.jagruti.org