E-DRUG: Pulse Polio in India
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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
dabadedr@yahoo.com