Re: US government website for collecting adverse events after vaccination is inaccessible to most users. Puliyel and Naik’s views.
Dr Anand [1] may not have been aware of an earlier paper of which Dr Puliyel is also co-author [2]
'Polio programme: let us declare victory and move on'. This is the abstract:
"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."
There may be a mighty assumption, for instance on the part of the western media, that resistance to WHO programmes is always ignorant or ill-informed, and we may misunderstand geo-politics as a result. I also note the paper by Oller et al 'HCG Found in WHO Tetanus Vaccine in Kenya Raises Concern in the Developing World'. There are legitimate questions to be answered, and some deeply troubling cultural dimensions to all of this. The WHO should be answerable to the world community, and not just stand on its dignity.
Rapid Response:
Re: US government website for collecting adverse events after vaccination is inaccessible to most users. Puliyel and Naik’s views.
Dr Anand [1] may not have been aware of an earlier paper of which Dr Puliyel is also co-author [2]
'Polio programme: let us declare victory and move on'. This is the abstract:
"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."
There may be a mighty assumption, for instance on the part of the western media, that resistance to WHO programmes is always ignorant or ill-informed, and we may misunderstand geo-politics as a result. I also note the paper by Oller et al 'HCG Found in WHO Tetanus Vaccine in Kenya Raises Concern in the Developing World'. There are legitimate questions to be answered, and some deeply troubling cultural dimensions to all of this. The WHO should be answerable to the world community, and not just stand on its dignity.
[1] JK Anand, 'Re: US government website for collecting adverse events after vaccination is inaccessible to most users. Puliyel and Naik’s views' 9 July 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2449/rr-18
[2] Vashisht N & Puliyel J, 'Polio programme: let us declare victory and move on' Indian J Med Ethics. 2012 Apr-Jun;9(2):114-7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22591873
[3] Oller et al, '
HCG Found in WHO Tetanus Vaccine in Kenya Raises Concern in the Developing World', OALibJ> Vol.4 No.10, October 2017, https://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=81838
Competing interests: No competing interests