On May 13, the Taliban issued a statement declaring that it would no longer target polio vaccine workers and is ordering its fighters to help in vaccination campaigns.

Just two days earlier, however, the World Health Organization reported that “wild-type” poliovirus was isolated in Somalia from a 32-month-old girl who suddenly became paralyzed, as well as from three other individuals with whom she was in contact. Genetic testing has since indicated that the virus in question is linked to polioviruses circulating in northern Nigeria, according to Nature’s newsblog.  The setback marks the first new case of naturally occurring polio in Somalia since March 2007. Emergency vaccination initiatives—and fund-raising to pay for them—are now underway.

As the accompanying map shows, this development is a concern not just for Somalia, but for a broad swath of Africa, where low vaccination rates leave children particularly vulnerable to infection with polio, most likely from Nigeria (particularly northern Nigeria), where the virus is still endemic. In our increasingly interconnected world, an uncontrolled outbreak in these countries could fuel polio’s return around the globe–which would be particularly tragic considering that there had been only 26 cases of polio (before the Somalia news) reported worldwide so far in 2013, compared with 53 at this point last year.

Source:
Scientific American

You have a much greater risk of getting a neurological disorder after getting the flu than after getting inoculated for it, concludes a new Ontario study that pokes holes in one of the biggest arguments against the vaccine.

One case of the Guillain-Barre Syndrome occurs for every one million flu shots compared to one case for every 60,000 cases of the flu, according to research published Wednesday in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

GBS is a rare disorder in which a person’s own immune system damages nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis. Most people fully recover, but some have permanent nerve damage. In very rare cases, people have died.

“What the study shows is the chance of getting GBS from the flu shot is smaller than the chance of getting GBS from influenza, so you should not use the fear of getting it as the reason not to get the flu shot,” said lead author Dr. Jeff Kwong, a scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Public Health Ontario.

The syndrome affects one or two people per 100,000.

The exact cause is unknown, but it is often preceded by an infectious illness such as a respiratory infection or stomach flu. On rare occasions, people can develop it after getting a vaccination.

Concerns about contracting GBS after the flu shot first surfaced in 1976 when the United States halted a swine-flu immunization program because of a small jump in cases — about one additional case for every 100,000 people vaccinated.

It’s for that reason that consent forms for the flu shot now note there is a small chance of getting GBS.

Concerns about GBS have posed a challenge to jurisdictions trying to achieve high coverage in large-scale immunization programs.

But this new evidence should help allay those fears.

“A lot of people worry about GBS but they don’t think of the benefits of the flu shot,” Kwong said.

“Overall, flu shots are generally safe and do more good than harm,” he said.

The study found that the risk of developing GBS within six weeks of getting the flu shot was 52 per cent higher than the usual risk. The chance of getting it within six weeks of having the flu was 16 times higher than the usual risk.

Source:
TheStar.com

Dr. Peter Collins, Chief of RNA Virus Section, NIAID at NIH gives his presentation on ‘RSV vaccines: developing an effective vaccine’.

Source:
Vaccinenation & Terrapinn

UNICEF reported this month that new solar powered refrigerators in Haiti have helped keep vaccines from going bad.

In much of rural Haiti, where there is no reliable form of electricity, it has been difficult to keep vaccines refrigerated. The vaccines, which range from polio to other live saving medicines for children, are needed to keep young children safe.

The old refrigerators were powered by gas. While this avoided power outage issues, the gas had to be delivered, which could cause problems if the gas supply was depleted.

“The old refrigerators used gas, and sometimes the vaccines would go bad because we ran out of gas,” Ms. Beliard, a community health worker in a rural area of Haiti, said. “The solar refrigerator is very important, because it means the vaccines are always available. We always have vaccines available for children.”

UNICEF installed a solar-powered refrigerator at a nearby health center. It is just one of the 153 solar refrigerators that UNICEF plans to distribute to different parts of Haiti.

“The vaccines are very important because they protect my children against polio, measles and other diseases,” Ms. Veneuse, a mother in Haiti, said. “I always get my children vaccinated.”

Source:
Vaccine News Daily

Poster created prior to 1979 promoting the importance of Smallpox vaccination. In 1966, the CDC began the worldwide smallpox eradication campaign in Africa and by 1979 the world was declared smallpox-free.

Source:
Public Health Image Library (PHIL) (ID#: 2584)

The Jim Henson Company’s Sid the Science Kid is hearing a lot of talk about how to stay healthy, which leads him to ask lots of questions about what can make a person sick and what he can do to keep from getting sick. In the special episode “Getting a shot: You Can Do It!,” Sid and his friends learn the basic science behind germs, viruses and vaccines.

Source:
New Media

Lyme disease, unknown before 1975, is now the scourge of summer time hikers and has spread across the northern hemisphere from humble origins in Connecticut. A bacterial infection carried by deer ticks and picked up in high grasses, the disease can cause severe inflammation in joints, heart problems, and nervous system disorders. Antibiotics are the usual course of treatment for the infection, but are not helpful unless administered soon after infection.

A vaccine that was developed by GlaxoSmithKline was effective in 76 percent of adults and 100 percent of children in providing immunity. LYMErix was approved in 1998 in the U.S., but because of the high cost and allegations that the vaccine caused, adoption of the vaccine was low. It was withdrawn from the market by 2002, even though highly publicized side effects were found not to be related to the vaccine.

Now, a new vaccine that protects against all major strains of the bacteria is showing promise in mid-stage clinical trials. Collaborative efforts among Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the pharmaceutical company Baxter are showing promise with a publication in The Lancet that said the new vaccine is safe, had no side effects, and produced a protective immune response in all 300 study participants.

In the study, the vaccination included three immunizations and one booster shot. Some of the vaccinations included adjuvant, a chemical used to boost the immune response to immunizations, which is common in vaccines. Patients all produced high antibody levels against the borreliosis bacteria.

“The results of the clinical trial conducted by Baxter are promising because the vaccine generated a potent human immune reaction, covered the complete range of Borrelia active in the entire Northern hemisphere, and produced no major side effects,” said Dr. Benjamin Luft, a co-author on the paper. “We hope that a larger-scale, Phase 3 trial will demonstrate not only a strong immune response but true efficacy in a large population that illustrates protection against Lyme disease.”

The researchers created chimeric, or hybrid, proteins that contained parts from different Borrelia strains in order to create a vaccine that protected from all types of Lyme disease. “After a series of experimentations and refinements, formulations consisting of these new OspA proteins were shown to protect against a broad spectrum of Lyme disease spirochetes,” said Dr. Luft, summarizing the research results. In 2011 more than 24,000 Americans were diagnosed with Lyme disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Source:
Medical Daily & The Lancet Infectious Diseases

Source:
Polio points & Bill & Melinda Gates foundation

The announcement from its Afghan leadership comes weeks after the government began a campaign to immunise more than eight million children aged between six months and five.

The government said it had trained 46,000 volunteers to conduct the campaign, which is funded by the American aid agency USAID, the World Health Organisation and Unicef. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the three remaining countries where polio remains a serious threat.

Efforts to eradicate the disease have been sabotaged by the Taliban, who have assassinated immunisation volunteers in all three countries claiming they were spies.

Source:
Irish Independent

A surveillance tool developed by an international team of researchers can track anti-vaccination sentiment online, allowing them to respond to vaccine concerns as they emerge.

Researchers have been monitoring 144 countries using the tool, in the hope public health officials can respond quickly to a loss of confidence in vaccines before vaccination refusal and disease outbreak occur.

The research, released Online First in The Lancet Infectious Diseases on Monday, found there were 10,380 reports on vaccines between May 2011 and April 2012. Nearly 70 per cent of the reports were positive or neutral towards vaccination, while just over 30 per cent were negative.

Of the negative reports, almost half were associated with vaccine suspension and refusal, belief systems that opposed vaccination, and risk perceptions.

Lead author of the study, Heidi Larson, said she was prompted to develop the tool while working for UNICEF’s global immunization program.

“[I] saw a growing number of countries facing negative media and public questioning of vaccines, the most significant of which was the northern Nigeria boycott of polio vaccination for 11 months from mid-2003,” Dr Larson, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the UK.

“I realized that there was no systematic monitoring nor assessment of the emergence of public concerns about vaccines, and thought there was a great need for this type of surveillance.”

The tool is so sophisticated that it can evaluate and prioritize reports according to their potential to disrupt vaccine uptake. It works by monitoring online media, such as blogs, based on a set of search criteria. Characteristics of the report are identified including the vaccine, disease, date and location, before being forward to analysts. If a negative report is categorized it as “high alert,” the information could then be forwarded to the Ministry of Health, World Health Organization and research institutes in the country affected, Dr Larson said.

She believes overall distrust in vaccines is increasing and is being more publicized through online mediums. There were a number of reasons for negative views, she said, including stories about bad reactions after immunisation, alternative belief systems, including belief in naturopathy, and distrust in governments and health care providers.

The surveillance tool would now be expanded to detect reports in additional languages, Dr Larson said.

“This is a system which aims to understand the range of sentiments and nature of issues about vaccines which are reported on and discussed in social media forums,” Dr Larson said.

“It recognises positive as well as negative sentiments and looks carefully at the content of both to understand what drives them.”

Source:
The Sydney Morning Herald