Reuters Health reported October 8, 2007 that 69 children in Nigeria are suffering from a Polio outbreak. Apparently, the World Health Organization (WHO) had provided Polio vaccines to some, but not all, of the children in a northern region of Nigeria. The people who received the oral polio vaccine excreted a mutated form of the virus that was able to infect the children who were not immunized. The virus thrives in areas with poor sanitation and spreads through facial and oral contact.
WHO spokesperson Sona Bari reported that vaccine-derived polio virus has spread in past years in Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, and other countries with limited immunization campaigns. The four countries that are still endemic for the polio virus are Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. Other countries including Chad, Angola, and Niger have had polio cases this year despite having previously stopped the spread of the disease.
Children require several doses of the oral polio vaccine in order to develop full immunity to the incurable disease.
“The WHO and its partners UNICEF, Rotary International and the U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have spent some $5 billion and nearly 20 years trying to destroy the disease that afflicted 350,000 people a year in 1988.”
Polio’s full name is poliomyelitis or infantile paralysis. It is an acute viral infectious disease of the nervous system that usually begins with general symptoms such as fever, headache, nausea, fatigue, muscle pains, and spasms and is sometimes followed by a more serious and permanent paralysis of muscles in one or more limbs, the throat, or the chest. Children under the age of five account for more than half of all cases of polio. Less than one percent of those infected by the poliovirus are affected by paralysis.
There is no cure for the disease. In the mid-20th century, the disease struck hundreds of thousands of children every year. The disease has been nearly eliminated from parts of the world since the 1960’s when widespread use of the vaccine began.
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