PHA-Exchange> New vaccines bring hope to polio fight

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Vern Weitzel vern at coombs.anu.edu.au

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070827/sc_nm/polio_dc


New vaccines bring hope to polio fight

By Laura MacInnis
Mon Aug 27, 12:21 PM ET

GENEVA (Reuters) - New vaccines have sharply reduced the number of children
paralyzed by polio and raised hopes that a $5 billion campaign to wipe it
out
may be close to success, a top public health official said in an interview.


About 404 people worldwide -- mainly young children -- have suffered
paralysis
from polio since the start of 2007, less than half the 1,017 new cases
reported
at the same point in 2006, according to the Global Polio Eradication
Initiative.

Bruce Aylward, director of the nearly 20-year-old campaign, said new and
more
effective vaccines had helped combat polio in some of its most stubborn
strongholds, including parts of India and Nigeria.

More collaboration between Pakistan and Afghanistan had also helped cut the
prevalence of polio in the two other countries where the disease remained
endemic, he said.

"It's a pretty exciting time," the Canadian epidemiologist told Reuters in
his
office in Geneva.

"I'm kind of afraid to talk about it," he said with a nervous laugh.
"Everybody
is surprised by the degree of progress."

The incidence of polio has fallen more than 99 percent since the World
Health
Organization, UNICEF, Rotary International and the U.S.-based Centers for
Disease Control launched the eradication drive in 1988, when 350,000 people
were
afflicted each year.

Efforts to eliminate it were thwarted by poor vaccination coverage in
pockets of
Africa and Asia, which led the virus to re-emerge in dozens of countries
previously declared polio-free.

2000 TARGET MISSED

The eradication initiative missed its original 2000 target, and no new goal
was
set. Aylward said that, in view of advances against the disease, it might be
possible to eradicate polio worldwide by the end of 2009.

Children require at least three, and often more, rounds of oral polio
vaccine to
build up immunity to the disease, which proliferates in areas with poor
sanitation.

Immunization campaigns traditionally used vaccines that combat all of
polio's
three strains: Type 1 being most virulent, and Type 3 concentrated in more
limited areas. Type 2 polio was last found in 1999.

Reflecting a new strategy to focus more aggressively on Type 1 polio --
which
spreads faster and causes paralysis more often than Type 3 -- the initiative
in
2005 started to shift to new vaccines that fight each single strain with
more
strength than trivalent models.

Aylward said the deployment of single-strain vaccines "had really knocked
the
wind out of Type 1" polio in India's Uttar Pradesh state and in Kano state
in
northern Nigeria, which had both proved to be been stubborn reservoirs of
the virus.

To completely stop the disease, he said India needed to maintain frequent
immunizations in areas of rapid population growth, Nigeria must raise the
number
of children getting vaccine, and security concerns limiting access in
Pakistan
and Afghanistan must be overcome.

Aylward also cited worries that outbreaks seen this year in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Angola, Somalia, Myanmar and Chad could cause polio to
spread
further unless those countries and their neighbors keep up regular
vaccination
campaigns
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