Source: IANS

‘The Special Immunization Week is an opportunity to reinforce India’s call to action for child survival and development,’ Gupta said, launching a new communication campaign attended by the media, development partners, and health officials here. The new communication campaign includes a new logo, TV spot, radio spot and posters. ‘The new logo and other communication material will promote consistent messaging to raise awareness on the urgency of reaching every child with life-saving immunization,’ Gupta added.

She encouraged her state counterparts and development partners to focus on ensuring that vaccines that are provided free under the Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) and reach every last child in the country. Louis-Georges Arsenault, UNICEF India Representative said: ‘In India, inequity persists within and between states. There are geographical, rural-urban, poor-rich, gender and other related differences in vaccination coverage. Disparities need to be addressed to reach every last child. The special immunization week is an opportunity for all of us to renew focus on ensuring equity in immunization coverage.’

‘The special immunization week lays sufficient importance on generating awareness about immunization and to reach marginalised populations in brick kilns, urban slums and other hard-to-reach areas. Engagement with media and other key stakeholders have been planned and will be continued in the following weeks,’ said Ajay Khera, deputy commissioner, Child Health and Immunization.

Source: IANS 

Read: Polio eradication: The show must go on

‘Vaccination is important for a child for a healthy life. The youth has the potential to bring about a huge change. Their individual efforts will together make a big impact and help save lives of children,’ said Raina. ‘Many experts had predicted that India will be the last country to stop polio. But India proved them wrong. With the involvement of youth and children, we look to mobilizing parents across the country to ensure vaccination for their children,’ Arsenault said.

Read: Vaccines for your child – what you should know

According to UNICEF, nearly 1.6 million children under the age of five years die in India every year. A large number of these deaths can be prevented with the lifesaving vaccines. ‘With India’s remarkable progress against polio this year, the polio eradication programme priorities have shifted to addressing polio associated risk factors to prevent polio virus importation, the most important being boosting routine immunization coverage,’ Arsenault added.

So, why is the medical community claiming that the Pentavalent vaccine is unsafe? 

The PV vaccine was supposed to be a pilot project in Kerala and Tamil Nadu on the recommendation of the National Technical Advisory group (NTAGI) in Dec 2011. It was introduced to tackle the rising deaths due to pneumonia and meningitis which are becoming leading causes for under-five child mortality in India. All the infants administered with the vaccine were to be monitored and reported about diligently. The data was supposed to be reviewed after one year before extending the programme to other states. This didn’t happen – it was introduced in Haryana at the end of last year before any data was analyzed.

Just in the last three weeks, three more infants in Kerala and one infant in Haryana died due to the vaccine. And the doctors haven’t reported any other cause. Following the deaths, pediatricians, academicians, public health lobbyists from all over India have requested the Union Health Secretary to withdraw the pentavalent vaccine from the National Immunization Programme.

According to a piece in DNA, certain doctors who wished to be unnamed claimed that international pharma lobbies like the GAVI alliance (Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization) have been influencing the Government’s decisions without proper investigation about its safety. This despite the fact that there have been infants deaths in other countries like Bhutan, Pakistan, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, due to the vaccine.

State Health Secretary Sanjay Kumar, who is also executive director of Bihar State Health Society, said on Sunday that the state will now focus to fight against measles by increasing routine immunization.

‘We are launching a measles catch-up campaign to vaccinate 13,433,835 children above 9 months and below 10 years of age with measles vaccine,’ he told media persons here at a media interaction organised here by Unicef.

Sanjay Kumar said the 21-day special campaign was to immunize more than 80 percent of the target age group, if not 100 percent. He admitted that Bihar is one of the 14 Indian states where measles vaccine coverage is below 80 percent.

Noting Bihar has remained polio-free for over two years, thanks to the state government’s commitment supported by development partners in the polio eradication programme, Sanjay Kumar said: ‘Now, the focus is to work to increase rate of vaccination against measles in the state.’

Measles is a highly infectious disease caused by virus and spreading from person to person through coughing and sneezing.

According to Unicef’s health expert Ghanshyam Setty, it kills nearly 100,000 children every year in India.

Source: IANS

New measures to tackle infections suffered by astronauts during space flights have been suggested by scientists in the US. Microgravity is known to weaken the astronaut’s immune system in some ways while it also increases the virulence and anti-microbial resistance of some micro-organisms, the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases reports.

Vaccinations could be expanded to include germs like Meningococcus and Pneumoccocus. And because no new germs are going to join the astronauts on board once they take off (assuming none are brought back from Mars), expanded pre-flight screening may help, too, according to a statement by Brown University.

‘Astronauts could be screened – in multiple body sites – for all strains of Staphyloccocus aureus, including some antibiotic-resistant forms, and stool could be screened and re-screened for Salmonella,’ said Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital infectious disease expert Leonard Mermel.

Mermel said astronauts could also receive formal infection control education regarding hand hygiene, environmental cleaning and other healthy practices. And a new bit of cargo, he added, which NASA is working on, is easy to use low-energy diagnostic testing kits for germs causing common infections.

Source: IANS

Could cow’s milk cure HIV/AIDS?

A study has claimed that antibodies from cow’s milk that protect against HIV can be potentially developed into affordable creams that can help protect humans against the infection. Dr Marit Kramski from Melbourne University found that when pregnant cows were vaccinated with a HIV protein, they produced high antibodies against the disease in their colostrum – the first milk produced after giving birth to a calf.

The antibodies bind to the HIV virus and inhibit the virus from entering human cells, Dr Kramski and her colleagues discovered.

‘We think the antibodies bind to the surface of the virus and block the protein which needs to be freed to get in contact with human cells — like a key and lock system. If the key’s not accessible or you change the key, you can’t open the door,’ Kramski said. Dr Kramski said that the method can generate up to one kilogram of antibodies from a single cow leading to an affordable prevention treatment for HIV. ‘It’s a very cheap and easy way to produce a lot of antibodies,’ she added.

The next step would be to test the effectiveness and safety of the milk before developing the antibodies into a cream that could be inserted in the vagina allowing women to protect themselves against contracting the virus during sex.

‘We have the antibodies at the moment — the next step will be formulation,’ Kramski said. ‘A lot of women, especially in Africa or South America, don’t have the power to say you need to use a condom before we have sex. The cream would give women the power to protect themselves,’ she added. ‘This milk looks like it can be a cheap, easy new prevention tool, because if you use drugs it’s really expensive,’ she said. Dr Kramski developed the milk in association with Australian biotechnology company Immuron Ltd.

Rabies is a viral disease that is transmitted to humans from animals. Rabies is spread by infected saliva that enters the body through a bite or scratch. Dogs are the main host and transmitters of rabies virus. There is no known effective treatment after the disease develops. But the disease is preventable.

Annually, an estimated 20,000 people in India succumb to rabies. As of now, prevention activities are being carried out by municipal bodies, but no concrete results have been achieved. There is no countrywide comprehensive national rabies control programme.

The flier project indicated that the plan is practical, reproducible and implementable. A comprehensive control strategy for both human and animal components is planned in the 12th Plan. The human component will cover all 35 States/UTs and the animal component will be conducted in selected 30 cities. Health professionals will be trained to deal with animal bites, awareness programmes will be launched and steps will be taken to minimize animal bites. Sterilization and vaccination of dogs, with the involvement of civil society and municipal bodies, will be the main focus.

The WHO advocates prevention of human rabies through mass dog vaccination, promotion of responsible dog ownership and dog population control programmes. Many countries have successfully eliminated transmission of rabies through this approach. However, a large population of dogs  and very low vaccination coverage makes it challenging for India.

This led to Satna collector KK Khare discontinuing the district vaccination drive and ordered an inquiry, which will be carried out under the supervision of additional district magistrate Brigendra Mishra.

On May 26, the district administration had reportedly supplied 2,000 vaccine doses to Majhgawan block. All vaccines have been sent for examination. The injections used for administering the vaccine have also been seized and sent for testing.  “The vaccines were procured from a reputed Indian company, but everything is under examination,” said Khare.

A WHO team is also likely to reach the community centre on Thursday. Meanwhile, the situation in the area is tense and police have been deployed.

Because of the confirmed measles cases, the government will examine if the positive cases were samples from vaccinated children.”If the virus was found in vaccinated kids, then the government would revisit the cold chain procedure to ensure that it was properly maintained. If the children have not been vaccinated, the vaccine coverage will be intensified,” a senior government officer said.

If the children were indeed vaccinated it will raise some serious questions about the vaccination regime. At least 10 children aged between six months and three years died in Kasipur. However, the official figures have put the death toll at four. 

Measles: All you need to know  

Do you know what vaccines your child needs?