The polio vaccine isn’t protecting children – and, worse, it appears to be causing a new and sometimes fatal form of the disease.
Concerns about the vaccine have arisen following a high number of deaths and hospital admissions from encephalitis and polio in the Uttar Pradesh region of India – where there has been an intensive vaccination programme.
Around 400 children have died, and a further 2,300 admitted to hospital, following an outbreak of a new form of viral encephalitis, and doctors admit they do not know its cause.
Most of the children have been vaccinated up to seven times in a programme designed to eradicate Japanese encephalitis from the region. While the strategy appears to have reduced incidents of the disease from 2005 when the polio vaccine was introduced, that was also the year when the new form started to appear.
These suspicions have been supported by separate reports from India of a new variant of polio that is a mutation from the live vaccine virus used in the programme.
(Sources: BBC; www.gaia-health.com)
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