Bill Gates and Polio Vaccination

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It seems that WHO choose the vaccine

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) POSITION STATEMENT SAFETY AND PRE-QUALIFICATION OF
ORAL POLIO VACCINE (OPV)
May 2006
Background
The following statement affirms the quality and safety of OPV, which is continuously monitored by WHO. The vaccine procured by UN agencies for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is of the same high quality world-wide.
Guaranteeing the safety and quality of OPV
All vaccines, including OPV, that are procured by UN agencies such as WHO and UNICEF must meet specifications set by the Expert Committee on Biological Standardisation (ECBS).1 These specifications govern the exact contents used in the production of OPV and ensure that the purity of the vaccine meets all technical criteria. The ECBS specifications make it impossible for OPV to contain any other undeclared biologically active substances, such as other viruses (including HIV), steroid hormones or other materials.
To ensure that vaccines procured by UN agencies meet these specifications, WHO verifies compliance with good manufacturing practices (GMP) and ensures a system of quality assurance and strict controls is in place. These mechanisms, known as WHO 'pre-qualification' of vaccines, are designed to guarantee that the manufacture of OPV used in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative meets international ECBS specifications.
OPV used for mass vaccination campaigns
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative partnership procures only WHO pre-qualified OPV for national immunization programmes and mass immunization campaigns. All UN-procured OPV for polio eradication campaigns comes from manufacturers who have been pre-qualified by WHO.
The WHO pre-qualification process systematically ensures that all UN-procured vaccines are safe, potent and of high purity standards. Only WHO pre-qualified OPV, that has been satisfactorily assessed for compliance with technical specifications and the above-mentioned requirements, can be considered in international tenders by UNICEF. Each batch of OPV undergoes full testing by the manufacturer, and the test results are reviewed by the National Regulatory Authority for biological substances (NRA) of the country where the OPV is produced, prior to its release. In addition, the NRA conducts a battery of tests on randomly selected batches.
The pre-qualification assessment procedure established by WHO requires a fully functional National Regulatory Authority (NRA) in the country of manufacture. The NRA performs the control and release of each batch of OPV, ensures a detailed review of production process and quality control methods, and verifies production
1 As described in the WHO Technical Report Series 904, adopted by the Expert Committee on Biological Standardization in 2002, which outlines the procedure for assessing the acceptability, in principle, of vaccines for purchase by United Nations agencies (WHO/V&B/02.08).
consistency. These procedures are further supported through random testing of
vaccines by WHO-contracted laboratories which ensure compliance with WHO
requirements and tender specifications on a continuing basis. WHO also monitors and
responds to vaccine-related complaints from the field on an ongoing basis.
Experience with safety and effectiveness of pre-qualified OPV
The safety and effectiveness of WHO pre-qualified OPV has been reaffirmed by the
more than 15 years of experience of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
OPV was developed in the 1950s and was approved for use 40 years ago. Since 1988,
over 10 billion doses of pre-qualified OPV have been administered to children worldwide
during mass immunization campaigns, as part of the global effort to eradicate
polio. These campaigns have reduced the number of polio cases worldwide since1988
by 99%. The number of polio endemic countries has been reduced from more than
125 in 1988 to just four at the beginning of 2006.
Content from External Source

http://www.polioeradication.org/Por...ndPrevention/Position statement_OPVsafety.pdf


The other item I had posted mentioned that it doesn't need refrigeration and the ease of administration. I remember
'Sabin Sundays' in the US
 
Here is the data from the report and one is able to compare expected/allowable cases of NPAFP against actual cases. It also shows the number of doses accumulated by a child in the previous 3 years.

http://jacob.puliyel.com/download.php?id=248

As I understand it the programme aims to give all under 5's a dose twice a year but some states run monthly programmes.
 
I don't know the answer, but you seem to think Gates chooses the vaccine. I don't know that he does.

I didn't think that and I am sure I did not infer it. Someone chooses it and apparently it is WHO... but now you mention it again... if I were funding something of that nature, I would want to choose where the money went so presumably the Gates Foundation do choose in their bit of it but as has been pointed out, there are many different contributors and Gates is not the sole provider by a long shot.
 
I believe the vaccination program started long before Gates was funding it.

In fact it started in 1988

he global eradication of poliomyelitis is a public health effort to eliminate all cases of poliomyelitis (polio) infection around the world. The global effort, begun in 1988 and led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Rotary Foundation, has reduced the number of annual diagnosed cases from the hundreds of thousands to around a thousand. If polio is the next disease to be successfully eradicated, this will represent only the third time this has ever been achieved, after smallpox[1] and rinderpest.[2] The goal of eradicating worldwide polio has attracted international and media attention, but since 2001 progress has been erratic in reducing the number of cases, which has led to getting rid of the last 1% being described as "like trying to squeeze Jell-O to death".[3] However, in 2011 incidence rates of the disease were dramatically reduced, and with large reduction again in 2012, hopes for eliminating polio have been rekindled. India is the latest country to successfully stop transmission of polio.[4]
Content from External Source

I would like to point this out in that same article


Vaccination

Oral polio vaccine is highly effective and inexpensive (about US$0.10 per dose, or US$0.30 per child[11]) and its availability has bolstered efforts to eradicate polio. A study carried out in an isolated Eskimo village showed that antibodies produced from subclinical wild virus infection persisted for at least 40 years.[12] Because the immune response to oral polio vaccine is very similar to natural polio infection, it is expected that oral polio vaccination provides similar lifelong immunity to the virus.[13][14]

Contact immunity to polio can occur when attenuated poliovirus derived from the oral polio vaccine is excreted, and infects and indirectly vaccinates unvaccinated individuals
Content from External Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication


More on why OPV was chosen

OPV also proved to be superior in administration, eliminating the need for sterile syringes and making the vaccine more suitable for mass vaccination campaigns. OPV also provided longer lasting immunity than the Salk vaccine.

In 1961, type 1 and 2 monovalent oral poliovirus vaccine (MOPV) was licensed, and in 1962, type 3 MOPV was licensed. In 1963, trivalent OPV (TOPV) was licensed, and became the vaccine of choice in the United States and most other countries of the world, largely replacing the inactivated polio vaccine.[8] A second wave of mass immunizations led to a further dramatic decline in the number of polio cases. Between 1962 and 1965 about 100 million Americans (roughly 56% of the population at that time) received the Sabin vaccine. The result was a substantial reduction in the number of poliomyelitis cases, even from the much reduced levels following the introduction of the Salk vaccine.[40]

OPV is usually provided in vials containing 10-20 doses of vaccine. A single dose of oral polio vaccine (usually two drops) contains 1,000,000 infectious units of Sabin 1 (effective against PV1), 100,000 infectious units of the Sabin 2 strain, and 600,000 infectious units of Sabin 3. The vaccine contains small traces of antibiotics— neomycin and streptomycin—but does not contain preservatives.[41] One dose of OPV produces immunity to all three poliovirus serotypes in approximately 50% of recipients.[16] Three doses of live-attenuated OPV produce protective antibody to all three poliovirus types in more than 95% of recipients. OPV produces excellent immunity in the intestine, the primary site of wild poliovirus entry, which helps prevent infection with wild virus in areas where the virus is endemic.[33] The live virus used in the vaccine is shed in the stool and can be spread to others within a community. IPV produces less gastrointestinal immunity than does OPV, and primarily acts by preventing the virus from entering the nervous system. In regions without wild poliovirus, inactivated polio vaccine is the vaccine of choice.[33] In regions with higher incidence of polio, and thus a different relative risk between efficacy and reversion of the vaccine to a virulent form, live vaccine is still used. The live virus also has stringent requirements for transport and storage, which are a problem in some hot or remote areas. As with other live-virus vaccines, immunity initiated by OPV is probably lifelong.[34]
Content from External Source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine

So Bill Gates did not chose it, and he is just helping to fund a program that was in place while he was still running MicroSoft.

It seems like that there are quite reasonable reasons why it was chosen over the injections.
 
I don't know about the OPV, but with some other vaccines, if you screw up the schedule, you get to start all over. I know several people at my work have missed one of their Hep B shots and had to start all over.
 
I replied here to a thread about the 47k non-polio afflictions, in India.
(I'm refraining from a massive cut&paste, so just read the first page there)
 
Sorry Oxy...you can pretend you know my values but you don't.

It was YOU who repeatedly called it "the west"- I did not defend the "bankers", merely pointed out that your dime-store political and economic analysis serves no one but your own bias.

Originally Posted by Oxymoron

Yes that is very good and a few billion is not to be sniffed at but the fact remains, the west, mostly U.K, America and France, (and I mean the CEO's, Banksters, and politicians), have enabled and funded most of the violence and destabilising by selling weapons, shovelling loans and bribes into corrupt leaders, (who are most often educated at the best schools and universities in Europe and/or the U.S only to become tyrants... I wonder where they get these ideas?

No doubt you will still try to defend your untenable position.

 
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SR and Oxy, let's keep this on topic and civil. You are starting to slowly verge outside the bounds of the politeness policy.
 
Any links to back that up?

“And according to The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, the polio vaccine program launched by Bill Gates paralyzed 47,500 children in 2011 alone.”

This oft-repeated statement is false.

First, these numbers were not presented in a research paper, they're from an editorial by two doctors from Delhi.

Second, the doctors’ point was the opposite of what the statement claims.

Acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) is any condition where the muscles don’t work. Polio causes AFP, but so do 31 other things—botulism, West Nile virus, snake venom, tumors, disease, physical trauma, curare etc. (That number is not an exaggeration. The Queensland Health Department lists 32 causes for AFP.)

http://www.health.qld.gov.au/cdcg/index/afp.asp

Children are monitored for AFP as part of any coordinated polio vaccination program because AFP is how polio manifests. India gets from 40,000 to 60,000 cases of AFP per year. (These numbers are known only because of the vaccination effort. As far as I can tell, AFP statistics are not kept where there is no coordinated polio eradication program.)
In 2011, India had 60,540 cases of AFP. The cause is not known, but one thing is known—only one of them was caused by polio.

http://apps.who.int/immunization_monitoring/en/diseases/poliomyelitis/afpextract.cfm

Polio-induced AFP in India went from 756 cases in 2009 to 44 cases in 2010 to 1 case in 2011 to 0 cases in 2012 and 0 cases in 2013.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/742895_6

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22439606/?i=2&from=/22591873/related

Here is the abstract of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics editorial:

“Polio programme: let us declare victory and move on.”

“It was hoped that following polio eradication, immunisation could be stopped. However the synthesis of polio virus in 2002, made eradication impossible. It is argued that getting poor countries to expend their scarce resources on an impossible dream over the last 10 years was unethical. Furthermore, while India has been polio-free for a year, there has been a huge increase in non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). In 2011, there were an extra 47,500 new cases of NPAFP. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Though this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated. The principle of primum-non-nocere was violated. The authors suggest that the huge bill of US$ 8 billion spent on the programme, is a small sum to pay if the world learns to be wary of such vertical programmes in the future.”
Content from External Source
The Indian doctors thus admit that the Gates vaccination effort worked in India. Their point was that the effort cost too much--$8 billion to prevent 500 to 700 cases of polio per year, whereas nothing was spent to address the 47,500 cases of non-polio AFP. Their second point was that it was unethical not to investigate the non-polio AFP data.

Although the doctors did say 47,500 cases of (AFP) in India were observed “directly proportional to doses of oral polio received,” this was because the vaccinators were the only people counting, not because the vaccination caused AFP. The doctors thought other people should have been counting too, and doing something about the numbers, and spending the Gates money better.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22591873/

No evidence suggests the Gates vaccination effort ever paralyzed even a single child.

It is undisputed that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation eradicated polio in India.

In what sense, then, is this a true statement: “And according to The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, the polio vaccine program launched by Bill Gates paralyzed 47,500 children in 2011 alone.”
 
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“And according to The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, the polio vaccine program launched by Bill Gates paralyzed 47,500 children in 2011 alone.”

This oft-repeated statement is false.

First, these numbers were not presented in a research paper, they're from an editorial by two doctors from Delhi.

Second, the doctors’ point was the opposite of what the statement claims.

@Ohadam, I really liked most of your reply, but I didn't find it a satisfying enough explanation for some statements made by the editorial doctors. In particular:


“Polio programme: let us declare victory and move on.”
“... Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Though this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated. The principle of primum-non-nocere was violated. ”
Content from External Source
If they claim non-nocere was violated, together with statements of correlation between OPV and AFP, it does sound like their opinion is that OPV was causing the NPAFP (only their opinion of course - but that is my read of it). So the only thing I don't agree with in your post was that that "doctors point of view was the opposite of what the statement claims".

I didn't have much to disprove these statements before, but now I've found two references to papers that are directly researching the causes of NPAFP in polio areas. It looks like this is caused by "non-polio-enterovirus":


"Non-Polio Enteroviruses Are a Leading Cause of Acute Flaccid Paralysis in the Pulse Polio Immunization Era in Karnataka, India"
"The present study suggests that non-polio enteroviruses are a dominant cause of acute flaccid paralysis in the post-polio eradication era in Karnataka, South India"
Content from External Source
https://aap.confex.com/aap/2013/webprogram/Paper19236.html
http://www.healio.com/pediatrics/em...es-cause-of-afp-in-post-polio-eradication-era

This one also appears to be researching non-polio-enterovirus in India back in 2009 for the same reasons, but the abstract is bit less clear on it being 'dominant' or not:

"Non-polio enteroviruses in acute flaccid paralysis children of India: Vital assessment before polio eradication"
"Conclusions:
This study provided definitive information about circulation, prevalence and new emerging NPEV in the polio-endemic region of India, hence they should be considered in AFP surveillance. This would help in adopting and planning new strategies in post-PV eradication era in the country. This is the right time to prepare for the future tasks while we head towards a polio-free region."
Content from External Source
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1754.2009.01529.x/abstract

This shows that, despite claims of correlation between OPV doses and NPAFP, research had already been completed in 2009 that indicated non-polio-enteroviruses were a significant cause. If there was indeed a correlation with OPV, it was likely due to the OPV being administered in known Polio areas, and those areas having poor sanitation which would spread both Polio and other Enteroviruses. Given that the 2009 paper existed long before the editorial, it seems irresponsible not to cite it, and to allude to correlations of OPV and AFP. The 2013 paper further clarifies that Enterovirus are not only a cause, but a dominant cause of non-polio AFP.

From my understanding, enteroviruses are in the same family of viruses as polio but are not caused by the polio vaccine nor mutations of the polio vaccine. They are different viruses:
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/217146-overview

A point could be made that more funding should be used for Enteroviruses, but that is not what was claimed:
"The polio vaccine program launched by Bill Gates paralyzed 47,500 children in 2011 alone.”
 
Lastly, here is a reference to the surveillance schedule which is required for any polio vaccination program:


At least one case of non-polio AFP should be detected annually per 100 000 population aged less than 15 years. In endemic regions, to ensure even higher sensitivity, this rate should be two per 100 000. - See more at: http://www.polioeradication.org/Dataandmonitoring/Surveillance.aspx
Content from External Source
So some correlations of NPAFP cases found and OPV doses administered is actually completely expected if both highly sensitive monitoring is occurring, and higher doses are occurring, to both detect and wipe-out the last few cases of polio.
 
The monkeypox claim doesn't sound like something a medical STUDENT would say, let alone a proclaimed MD. Monkeypox is not the same virus as smallpox. Of course, this is a failed and disgraced doctor well known for this kind of misinformation, so we shouldn't be surprised.

We still have the smallpox virus around to make sure of that any time a similar disease rears its head (like ricketsialpox, a bacterial disease with extremely similar symptoms). Monkeypox was identified in 1958, before the eradication of smallpox, specifically after an outbreak of smallpox occurred that infected a number of people who should have had natural immunity from cowpox infection. While symptoms are similar (but not identical!) to smallpox within a single individual, monkeypox has less than half the lethality and is substantially less infectious than smallpox.

Likewise, the claims about polio rates in India are also bunk. India did not experience an increase in infection rate. They experienced a 90% reduction just in the first few years, with the last type 2 case in India in October of 1999 (this was the last case in the world, in fact), and the last type 1 case in 2011 after several years with no cases.

Now, the 37 out of 100,000 rate of vaccine induced polio is technically true, of a live virus vaccine that India did not use and which most of the wold stopped using in the 1980's (later vaccines do not carry this risk, but do carry the usual risks of general infection symptoms and allergic reactions connected to any immunoresponse). Vaccine induced polio from this type of vaccine is far less lethal than the "real" type. The US almost lost its polio free certification because of a case of this some years ago, when an Amish child somehow received a vaccine that should have been destroyed decades earlier, but was easily treated and survived with no long term complications.

Again, India didn't use this vaccine, but areas that did, that 37 still represents a 99% reduction in infection rate, and came with only 10% the fatality rate and almost no cases of crippling or permanent paralysis. For comparison, though, take Nigeria, which still uses a live virus vaccine which can cause infection. They went from averaging thousands of wild cases with hundreds of deaths every year before their most recent eradication program to the situation now, with less than a dozen wild cases with two or three deaths and 30-40 vaccine derived cases with less than one death every five years. This represents a 94% reduction in total infection and a 99.6% reduction in deaths thanks to the vaccine.

Now, India *did* experience a resurgence of the virus in 2006 and 2007, relating to a substantial defunding of the eradication program leaving large parts of the country without coverage, and a boom of local people and governments interfering with the programs progress in areas that did have coverage. Because the disease was not eradicated when the country had the chance, and the reduction in vaccinations caused a surge in cases, all among unvaccinated people.


And then the meningitis bunk? That program's saved more than 9 lives in my city alone, this year alone. Not to mention that the program isn't limited to the US, but has vaccinated in over a dozen countries in Africa, several in Asia, and throughout North and South America. The CDC's actual numbers?
http://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/immunization/infographic/meningitis_a_infographic.htm
150,000 lives saved, plus 600,000 permanent disabilities prevented by 450 million people vaccinated globally (and 1.5 million cases prevented). Vaccination programs have cost $0.40 per person vaccinated, total money spent is 180 million, for a total cost per life saved of $1,200 US (and this is assuming that the 600,000 permanent disabilities are worthless).
 
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