Over 18 Million Children Immunized, Why The Worry?

A Nurse immunises a child in recent mass campaigns PHOTO/WHO

By PATRICK JARAMOGI

Kampala, Uganda:

By the time you read this at least 18 million children aged under 15 would have been immunized against measles, rubella and polio.

Among those immunized, in the just concluded five- day mass immunization campaign, are over 8 million children aged under 9 (nine) months who received the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV)

Of recent, measles, rubella and polio outbreaks have been a great public health concern, prompting the Government of Uganda, the World Health Organisation (WHO), GAVI, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the Vaccine Alliance to pull resources to have this concluded.

Uganda’s Health Minister, Jane Ruth Aceng while addressing the media in Kampala,  pushed the immunization days, to two extra days to cater for the Greater Kampala Areas that includes, the Capital, Kampala, Mukono and Wakiso districts.

All children whether immmunised before, or not were all subjected to the mass immunization that took place in all schools and communities in the country.

“This campaign does NOT replace the routine immunization schedule. Parents, caregivers and all concerned must ensure that all children receive and complete all the vaccines specified on our immunization schedule after the campaign,” said Dr Jane Ruth Aceng.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO Regional Director for Africa described the initiative as “extremely important.”

He said the efforts were geared towards preventing deaths, and avoiding unnecessary expenditures on caring for the sick.

Scientists speak out on OPV

Despite the calls for all parents to take their children for immunization, health officials and Local Council authorities had a rough time in some areas of the country, convincing parents to adhere to the directives. Some parents had mixed feelings and perception regarding, especially, the oral polio vaccine. A parent in Green Hill Academy also dragged the school to courts of law for “forcefully” immunizing his children against his will.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the polio component called type 2 (that is extinct) that is being immunized against was last recorded in Africa in 1999  (20 years ago), and this is where the issues stem from.

Three years ago (2016), the Ministry of Health made pronouncements that it would phase out oral polio vaccine (OPV) by 2020 and switch to the safer and WHO recommended Injectable polio vaccine (IPV).

WHO findings and publications in the Oxford Academic Clinical Infectious Disease (https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/67/suppl_1/S78/5146680), discovered that the use of OPV was linked to side effects among children that ranges from high fever, pain and weakness.

The use of IPV is a global strategy to end polio. Polio has three types of components, which include type 1, 2 and 3. But the old OPV vaccine had only the type 2 component.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) decided to combine all the three types of polio vaccine into the injectable polio vaccine, to make it safer for children. It is given once, at 14 weeks of a child.

But according to the Ministry of Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng, Uganda being home to biggest number of refugees in the world, from South Sudan DRC, Somalia, and elsewhere, makes children in Uganda more prone to polio infections.

Polio immunization is given against lifelong polio lameness and possible death.  The poliovirus usually affects children under five years who are not fully immunized.

According to the ministry of health statistics, for the last ten years, over 10 billion doses of OPV have been given to about three billion children worldwide. More than 10 million cases of polio have been prevented and the disease has been reduced by more than 99 percent since 1988 when the global polio eradication campaign started. The last polio virus in Africa was last seen in Nigeria in 2014.

What others think

The issue some “parents’ in Uganda have mixed feelings regarding these mass immunizations is the perception that rapid population growth in some of Africa’s poorest countries could put at risk future progress towards reducing global poverty and improving health.

According to a report by the philanthropic foundation of Bill Gates, released last year, Demographic trends show a billion people have lifted themselves out of poverty in the past 20 years, but, the report indicated that the swiftly expanding populations, particularly in parts of Africa, could halt the decline in the number of extremely poor people in the world, and it may even start to rise.

“Population growth in Africa is a challenge,” Bill Gates told reporters in a telephone briefing about the report’s findings.

The report  (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/africas-rapid-population-growth-puts-poverty-progress-at-risk-says-gates)  stated that that poverty in Africa is increasingly concentrated in a few countries, which also have among the fastest-growing populations in the world.

By 2050, it projected, more than 40 percent of world’s extremely poor people will live in just two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.

Asked about the best ways of tackling the growing population and poverty challenge, Gates said improving access to birth control was key, and this should be combined with investment in young people’s health and education.

“The biggest things are the modern tools of contraception,” Gates said. “If you have those things available then people have more control over being able to space their children.”

The report, entitled Goalkeepers, tracks 18 data points on United Nations development goals, including child and maternal deaths, stunting, access to contraceptives, HIV, malaria, extreme poverty, financial inclusion, and sanitation.

In its family planning section, the report called on policymakers to empower women to exercise the right to choose the number of children they have, when they have them, and with whom.

An article in the Times of London, headlined Billionaire Club in Bid to Curb World Population,” said the issues discussed in the top-secret meeting included health care, education and–by far the most controversial–slowing the global population growth. (https://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2009/05/26/billionaires-try-to-shrink-worlds-population-report-says/)

“Taking their cue from Gates they agreed that overpopulation was a priority,” the article said, adding that “this could result in a challenge to some Third World politicians who believe contraception and female education weaken traditional values.”

 

According to U.N. data, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. Its population is projected to double by 2050, and could double again by 2100.

Yet if every woman in sub-Saharan Africa were able to have the number of children she wanted, the projected population increase could be up to 30 percent smaller, said the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual Goalkeepers report.

This would also enable more girls and women to stay in school longer, have children later, earn more as adults, and invest more in their children, it added. Smaller families tend to be healthier and more productive.

“To continue improving the human condition, our task now is to help create opportunities in Africa’s fastest-growing, poorest countries,” the Microsoft founder and his wife wrote in the report. “This means investing in young people.”

It started way back in 1974

The idea that “people are the problem” became official policy in the United States in 1974 with a confidential security memorandum written by then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.

Declassified in 1989, the National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) presented a case for the United States to suppress the population of poor nations in the name of national security. The document is still available on the USAID web site to this day.

It’s interesting to read the document today and see how it really has guided so much of US foreign policy — particularly the fact that almost all of the “aid” given to the poor nations comes with “sexual rights and reproductive health” strings attached.

Also interesting is its recommendation that the US work through other non-governmental organizations and give credit to in-country leaders to avoid creating the impressions of coercion and imperialism.

What are the issues with OPV?

Mutations associated with prolonged replication of the attenuated polioviruses found in oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) can lead to vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) and cause paralysis indistinguishable from that caused by wild poliovirus.  (https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4462293)

The World Health Organization has initiated the transition to exclusive use of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), with OPV administration in cases of an outbreak.

However, it is currently unclear how IPV-only vaccination, well known to provide humoral but not mucosal immunity, will impact the development of paralysis causing OPV variants. (https://www.ener-chi.com/experimenting-in-africa-with-polio-vaccines-has-led-to-vaccine-induced-polio/)

Children infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have been documented to show decreased mucosal immunity following OPV vaccination. Thus, HIV-infected children vaccinated with OPV may serve as a proxy for children with IPV-only vaccination.

 

 

 

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