Somalia is suffering an "explosive" outbreak of polio

[jimmy olsen]

We're so close to eradicating this disease, the fuckups ruin it for everyone.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/somalia-polio-outbreak-spreads-105-recorded-cases

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Somalia is suffering an "explosive" outbreak of polio and now has more cases than the rest of the world combined, an official said Friday.

Vaccine-wielding health workers face a daunting challenge: accessing areas of Somalia controlled by al-Qaida-linked militants, where 7 of 10 children aren't fully immunized.

Polio is mostly considered eliminated globally except mainly in three countries where it is considered endemic: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. India marked a major success in February 2012 by being removed from the World Health Organization's list of countries plagued by the disease.

Somalia now has 105 cases, figures released Friday show, and another 10 cases have been confirmed across the border in a Kenyan refugee camp filled with Somalis. Globally there have been 181 cases of polio this year, including those in Somalia and Kenya.

Vaccination campaigns in Somalia have reached 4 million people since the outbreak began in May, but those health officials have limited access to about 600,000 children who live in areas of Somalia controlled by the armed Islamist group al-Shabab.

"It's very worrying because it's an explosive outbreak and of course polio is a disease that is slated for eradication," said Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at the World Health Organization in Geneva. "In fact we're seeing more cases in this area this year than in the three endemic countries worldwide."

In a bit of good news, Rosenbauer said in a phone interview with The Associated Press that polio numbers are down in the three remaining endemic countries.

"The only way to get rid of this risk is to eradicate in the endemic countries, and there the news is actually paradoxically very good," he said.

Somalia was removed from the list of endemic polio countries in 2001, and this year's outbreak is the second since then.

It began one month after Bill Gates helped unveil a six-year plan to eradicate polio at the Global Vaccine Summit. That effort will cost $5.5 billion, three-quarters of which has already been pledged, including $1.8 billion from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The outbreak in Somalia does not set back the six-year plan, said Rosenbauer, because unpredictable and intermittent outbreaks were programmed into the timeline.

In al-Shabab controlled south-central Somalia, disease surveillance is functioning, but health officials are likely not able to detect all polio cases.

Mohamud Yasin, a retired doctor who has treated polio throughout his career, said: "It's indeed worrying because this comes at a time when the country is still hugely affected by the raging fighting, which prevents volunteers from accessing people in need of vaccines. It may take time before we can confidently say we have universal coverage of the immunization."

In a sign of how difficult it is for medical providers to operate in Somalia, the aid group Doctors Without Borders announced this week it was pulling out of the country after 22 years because of attacks on its staff members. MSF, as the group is also known, was not taking part in the polio vaccination campaign.

Somalia shares one significant trait with the three endemic countries: pockets of severe violence where populations can be hostile to health care workers. In February, gunmen believed to belong to a radical Islamic sect known as Boko Haram shot and killed at least nine women taking part in a polio vaccination drive in northern Nigeria.

Polio, for the moment, has been defeated in two areas of Pakistan. But in one region where the disease persists — the dangerous North and South Waziristan region near the Afghanistan border — local authorities have banned immunization campaigns since mid-2012. Vaccination programs, especially those with international links, have come under suspicion since a Pakistani doctor ran a fake vaccination program to help the CIA track down Osama bin Laden.

"So no immunizations are taking place, and sure that's a challenge and that has to be addressed," said Rosenbauer. Still, he noted that nine times out of 10 when a child isn't immunized in Pakistan it's because of operational issues, not social resistance.

Southern Afghanistan hasn't recorded any polio cases since November, a story of success after years of failure there. Afghanistan saw 37 polio cases last year but only four so far this year. Polio cases are also down in Nigeria year-over-year, but about the same in Pakistan.

When the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched in 1988, the disease was endemic in 125 countries and paralyzed about 1,000 children per day. Since then the incidence of polio has decreased by more than 99 percent. Five children have been paralyzed in Somalia's recent outbreak.

At the April summit, Gates talked about the need to vaccinate the hardest-to-reach children in the endemic countries.

Eradicating the last cases has proved difficult. The World Health Organization knows the Somalia outbreak came from West Africa but can't say exactly where. In 2011, the virus jumped from Pakistan to China, and the year before that to Tajikistan. There have been more than 50 outbreaks in the last decade.

Poliovirus is very contagious. The virus lives in an infected person's throat and intestines. It spreads through contact with the feces of an infected person and through droplets from a sneeze or cough.

[Viking]

Polio only exists today in places where crazy religious nujobs try to kill health workers.

[crazy canuck]

Thank goodness they didnt expose their children to the evils of vaccination.

[crazy canuck]

Polio only exists today in places where crazy religious nujobs try to kill health workers.

Also coming the a neighbourhood near you where crazy nutjobs who think its a bad idea to be vaccinated are concentrated in sufficient numbers so that the herd immunity of the rational folks no longer protects them.

[CountDeMoney]

Just imagine how Black Hawk Down would've turned out if all the skinnies had leg braces.

[Malthus]

Thank goodness they didnt expose their children to the evils of vaccination.

Ruin their natural immunity, it would.   

[Ed Anger]

Just imagine how Black Hawk Down would've turned out if all the skinnies had leg braces.

[derspiess]

[merithyn]

Thank goodness they didnt expose their children to the evils of vaccination.

Interestingly, according to the CDC, that whole vaccination issue barely made a dent in the percentage of kids in the US who got vaccines. There's a 1% dip in 2009 and 2010, but otherwise, the trend toward getting kids vaccinated has continually gone up.

It may be a meme now, but the reality is that very few parents ever stopped their kids from getting vaccines due to the fear of autism. Most kids who aren't vaccinated are below the poverty line, and I have a feeling that those parents aren't so up on the scare-mongering regarding "natural parenting", etc.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus12.pdf#078

[Maximus]

Much better than an outbreak of explosive polio

[derspiess]

<insert Ed joke about explosive diarrhea>

[crazy canuck]

Thank goodness they didnt expose their children to the evils of vaccination.

Interestingly, according to the CDC, that whole vaccination issue barely made a dent in the percentage of kids in the US who got vaccines. There's a 1% dip in 2009 and 2010, but otherwise, the trend toward getting kids vaccinated has continually gone up.

It may be a meme now, but the reality is that very few parents ever stopped their kids from getting vaccines due to the fear of autism. Most kids who aren't vaccinated are below the poverty line, and I have a feeling that those parents aren't so up on the scare-mongering regarding "natural parenting", etc.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus12.pdf#078

Unfortunately the conclusions you have drawn from the data are wrong.

There are considerable concerns within health profession regarding pockets of children who are not being immunized because unfortunately this kind of insanity travels in groups.  Here are just a few articles that I found within a few seconds of googling. 


You will note that the problem has been caused by the nonsense people were spouting about vaccination causing autism.  That shows up in the data where the pockets are formed in affluent communities (not just poor folks as you asserted).  Interestingly the data shows that while poor folks have underimmunized children they do not tend to have children who are not immunized at all.  The characteristics of the two groups tend to be different.  Basically - poor = probably dont have the full schedule of immunization while rich and stupid means you bought into the autism scare and simply refused to have your child immunized.

As said early this kind of stupidity travels in packs which creates pockets of children who have not been immunized which compromises the herd immunity. 


There are a number of other articles out there if you are interested.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/pockets-of-vaccine-noncompliance-in-california/

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-11/children-across-australia-not-fully-imunised/4622666

[merithyn]

Unfortunately the conclusions you have drawn from the data are wrong.

There are considerable concerns within health profession regarding pockets of children who are not being immunized because unfortunately this kind of insanity travels in groups.  Here are just a few articles that I found within a few seconds of googling. 


You will note that the problem has been caused by the nonsense people were spouting about vaccination causing autism.  That shows up in the data where the pockets are formed in affluent communities (not just poor folks as you asserted).  Interestingly the data shows that while poor folks have underimmunized children they do not tend to have children who are not immunized at all.  The characteristics of the two groups tend to be different.  Basically - poor = probably dont have the full schedule of immunization while rich and stupid means you bought into the autism scare and simply refused to have your child immunized.

As said early this kind of stupidity travels in packs which creates pockets of children who have not been immunized which compromises the herd immunity. 


There are a number of other articles out there if you are interested.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/pockets-of-vaccine-noncompliance-in-california/

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-11/children-across-australia-not-fully-imunised/4622666

What I was actually saying was that the "fear mongering" of the autism scare from 2009 and 2010 has waned, and those "pockets" you're talking about are diminishing in the US. My point was that though there had been a downswing of 1% for two years, that's since reversed itself, and there are now more kids getting immunized than ever before. The only area that's showing itself still in the danger zone are those children living in poverty.

Given that your first article is dated 2009 and the second is from Australia, I'm not sure what you're arguing.

[crazy canuck]

What I was actually saying was that the "fear mongering" of the autism scare from 2009 and 2010 has waned, and those "pockets" you're talking about are diminishing in the US. My point was that though there had been a downswing of 1% for two years, that's since reversed itself, and there are now more kids getting immunized than ever before. The only area that's showing itself still in the danger zone are those children living in poverty.

Given that your first article is dated 2009 and the second is from Australia, I'm not sure what you're arguing.

Ok, if you need more evidence here is an article from today.

A Texas megachurch linked to at least 21 measles cases has been trying to contain the outbreak by hosting vaccination clinics, officials said Monday.

The outbreak started when a person who contracted measles overseas visited Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark, located about 20 miles north of Fort Worth, Texas. Officials with area health departments said those affected by the outbreak range in age from 4-months to 44-years-old. All of the school-aged children with measles were homeschooled, and majority of those who were infected had not been vaccinated.In a recent sermon posted online, senior pastor Terri Pearsons encouraged those who haven't been vaccinated to do so, adding that the Old Testament is "full of precautionary measures."

"I would encourage you to do that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. Go do it. Go do it. Go do it. And go in faith," said Pearsons, whose father is televangelist Kenneth Copeland. But she added, if "you've got this covered in your household by faith and it crosses your heart of faith then don't go do it."

"The main thing is stay in faith no matter what you do."

In Tarrant County, where the church is located, 11 of the 16 people with measles were not vaccinated while the others may have had at least one measles vaccination. In nearby Denton County, none of their five cases had been vaccinated.

Texas Department of State Health Services spokeswoman Christine Mann said so far across the state there have been 27 cases of the measles this year, with five of those cases having no links to current outbreak. She said it is unclear whether a case recently diagnosed in Harris County, where Houston is located, is tied to the outbreak. There were no cases in the state last year and six the year before.

"If it finds a pocket of people who are unimmunized, and the majority of our cases are unimmunized so far, then if you are around a person with measles, you will get sick," said Russell Jones, chief epidemiologist for Tarrant County Public Health.

Measles is spread by coughing, sneezing and close personal contact with infected people; symptoms include a fever, cough, and a rash on the face. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children get two doses of the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, called the MMR. The first does should be when they are 12 to 15 months old and the second when they are 4 to 6 years old.

Vaccination opt-out rates nationwide have been creeping up since the mid-2000s, spurred in part by the belief the battery of vaccinations routinely given to infants could lead to autism despite scientific evidence to the contrary and the debunking of one of the most publicized studies that first fueled vaccine fears years ago.

Pearsons' father is a pioneer of the prosperity gospel, which holds that believers are destined to flourish spiritually, physically and financially — and share the wealth with others. He has built a vast ministry with a worldwide reach. Eagle Mountain International Church is located on the grounds as the Kenneth Copeland Ministries.

Robert Hayes, risk manager with Kenneth Copeland Ministries, said they have held several vaccination clinics since the outbreak. He said the church has never advised against adults or children getting immunized for measles or seeking medical care.

A statement from the organization said their position regarding any medical condition is to "first seek the wisdom of God, His Word, and appropriate medical attention from a professional that you know and trust."

Hayes did not know why some people had not immunized their children. "Some had for whatever reason chosen not to. Some depending on the age of their child were advised by their physician to wait until the child was a certain number of years old. I don't get a sense for why after that they did not," he said.

He said if people are still choosing to not be immunized and they've been exposed to the measles they are being asked to isolate themselves until it is clear they are not infected.

The incubation period for measles is about two weeks from exposure to fever. People are contagious from four days before getting the rash to four days before breaking out in a measles rash.

[merithyn]

Oddly, I provided CDC stats that show that vaccination rates have recently been going back up after a short dip. Perhaps your journalist isn't aware of those stats.

And I didn't say that there wasn't an issue. I said that since the autism scare has been publically and continually debunked since 2010, that issue has gotten significantly better as the stats bear out.

I guess I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are you claiming that per this journalist it's still bad and getting worse?