Vaccinations

The article, “Fighting Polio: What Happened In 2019 and What Is Next,” by Bruce Y. Lee summarizes some good and bad news regarding the Polio vaccines, and the disease itself. The first good news announced is that two of the three wild polio virus strains have now been globally certified as eradicated, leaving only the wild polio virus type 1. The other two were declared eradicated in 2015 and last year, respectively. I think that this is great news, although I wonder why type 1 is not eradicated with the other two. Could it be a problem with creating an effective vaccine, vaccine distribution, or virulence?

The second announcement made was that Reaching the Last Mile Forum in Abu Dhabi pledged about $2.6 billion in efforts to eradicate polio. While this is wonderful news, the article also mentions that the wild type 1 strain made a comeback in 2019. According to the UN News, there was only 28 reported cases in 2018 which jumped to 163 in 2019. Unfortunately, anti-vaccination propaganda has essentially hindered efforts to vaccinate people around the world. This false propaganda spreading about the harmful effects of vaccinations are contributing to the increased incidents of polio, and like we discussed in class, vaccinations are prepping your immune system to handle disease. By vaccinating people around the world, we have the potential to eradicate polio from Earth since it has a human only reservoir, but false propaganda is working against those efforts in which people are pouring literal billions of dollars into.

Lastly, according to an article written in Stat News, there are two types of vaccinations available for polio, the oral polio vaccine (OPV) and the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). This article mentions that the IPV may be better than the OPV. The OPV is essentially liquid drops of weakened but alive polio viruses, but has been causing some problems. While this is not supposed to cause polio, they can in rare instances revert to disease-causing versions. Countries in Africa, Eastern Mediterranean, South East Asia, and the Western Pacific have experienced such outbreaks. I think that while this is a concern, the public needs to be educated and reassured that the benefit of receiving a vaccine outweighs the risk of not. It is also very important to note that new OPVs are in phase I and II of their clinical trials.