Friday, February 8, 2008

Are we losing the battle against Polio!!!


6 comments:

Unknown said...

This is a very serious issue and the government needs to divert more attention towards this and come up with alternate possible solutions otherwise the battle will never come to an end.

Proxy said...
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Proxy said...

I think the problem of polio is not an isolated problem. The problem is rooted in more fundamental problems i.e. Health Care Policy and Education Policy in India. Rather than just attacking government, I think public driven, local community efforts should be the first in line solution to these problems. The primary reason for many of our countries woes have been due to wasteful expenditures due to inefficient Health care system, lack of basic cleanliness, education and lack awareness amongst people. Increasing a budget really wont do magic, I think its more of a policy problem, we need better think tanks to formulate policies. I think its more of awareness and education issue, people should be able to deal with problems on their own (problems like keeping at least their surroundings clean) I think it all comes with education. So if you its just not one problem, not just a health care policy problem, but also an education policy problem. On governments end it require acceptability of the facts of the economic burden due to inefficient policies.

Amit Srivastava said...

Polio occurring through natural infection, was eliminated from the United States by 1979 and the Western hemisphere by 1991 and India started to seriously look at this only in the year 1995 by launching the polio vaccination program . But then as the saying goes its better late then never , Inspite the best efforts of the government to wipe out virus we haven't been succesful primarily because of lack of educational awareness about the deadly virus . Until and unless the people get really educated and start thinking in the terms that by not particpating in the vaccination they are actually not hurting themselves but bringing all the other sweet children in the world in danger we are never going to see polio free world no matter how much money we pump in . The theory is vindicated by the fact that the most illiterate states are leading the cases for the outbreak of polio virus . Therefore the key is immunization coupled with awareness !..

Ram Kumar K said...

It's really not a good news to hear that india is not going to achieve the ambitious objective of eradicating the Polio Virus in near future.

Some of the factors which not allowing us to eradicate polio virus are:
1. Lack of Sanitation and existence of terrible malnutrition
2. Sometimes children miss their drops. this happens especially when the family is relocated.
3. there is an aversion towards OPV administration amongst some sections in Uttar Pradesh because of the myth that it leads to impotency. The latter is resulting in a crisis since a majority of children are being missed out owing to spread of this myth as the houses are either found locked or the health workers are not welcomed when the surveillance teams come for administration.

Only using of OPV alone is not going to solve the problem. We have to use combination of OPV and IPV in polio-riddden states.

Other than the risk of acquiring VAPP, OPV loses its effectiveness in conditions of poor sanitation and thus this is the primary reason why polio still persists in Uttar Pradesh. Poor hygienic conditions perpetuate diarrhea and this high occurrence of diarrhea interferes with OPV administration making it difficult for the body to retain the oral polio vaccine long enough to develop immunity.

IPV not only carries away the risk of acquiring VAPP but also provides individual immunity. It provides better humoral immunity compared to OPV and triggers and excellent immune response and long lasting immunity to all the 3 types of polio virus strains.

Thus, its time to focus and change our strategies, that is, combination of OPV and IPV should be used in polio-ridden states. The time has come to make the right choice and protect our children from this crippling disease.

Unknown said...

if you look carefully at the figures indictaed in the article, the no of people given drops has always been less then the people targetted initially !! why is that ?? then u have no chance..so how do we give ourselves that chance...by start from here & closing the loophole. If x no of people are targetted, x no SHOULD get the drops.