Polio Today

As many of us are aware, there has been drastic increases in people not willing to vaccinate their children. Some believe they are harmful and may cause further damage to their seemingly healthy child. I’ve even seen posts about the number of vaccines a child receives early in life being way too many. Looking at an image of a child with numerous vaccines around them does seem scary, however it’s not like they are being given 10 or more shots in one day. Babies are given multiple vaccines because they are technically immunocompromised, having no prior exposure to any bacteria or virus. A child with no protection against a virus will more than likely come down with severe signs and symptoms, whereas if they had a vaccine to help fight off the disease, their signs and symptoms wouldn’t be as severe. As my microbiology teacher says, you wouldn’t want to leave a baby alone to fight off a vicious bear by itself. Many would wish for their child to have help. This bear is the same as a disease you child will come in contact with at some point. You should want your child to have some type of help in order to survive.

A vaccine is merely a package with a live or inactive pathogen. There is only enough pathogen to induce an active immune response. This is similar to your child being exposed to a small dog first, something that isn’t harmful to them unlike a vicious bear. Polio, for example, has two different vaccines. One is an inactivated virus (IPV) and the other is an attenuated virus (OPV) which just means a weakened pathogen that has a low chance of causing a disease. Approximately three years ago there was a change to the polio vaccine. Heath care providers wanted to remove the type 2 poliovirus from the vaccine since it was linked to children becoming paralyzed when taken orally. They were hoping to eradicate type 2 poliovirus, never having to put a child at the risk of become paralyzed. However, since it wasn’t deemed eradicated everywhere, children that didn’t receive any form of polio vaccine would be at high risk of contracting the disease. Many countries were successful in removing type 2 poliovirus, however Africa wasn’t. Many professionals don’t want to switch back to the old vaccine, however I think it would only make sense to do so. I feel like they want to prove the change in the polio vaccine can work, but when more than double the amount of people had cases of polio than the previous year, something has to change. There is a vaccine virus associated with not receiving the vaccine with type 2 polio. At first I was confused about what this meant, but now believe it means the live virus in the vaccine can become virulent again if a child comes in contact with someone who is infectious. This would mean the living virus inside the vaccine that had a low chance of causing disease has now been activated again by the polio virus that infected the child. This is a new concept to me, I never thought of a vaccine being able to become virulent again and cause the disease it should have been protecting against. Many children in Africa don’t have any protection against type 2 poliovirus because of the change in the vaccine, so the vaccine virus has become a problem. I think the safest option, for Africa especially, is to go back to the old vaccine.

In the later end of 2019, there is believed to be only polio virus type one in the world according to this article. Wild polio type 2 and 3 were said to be eradicated as of 2019. This data conflicts with the previous article that stated type 2 hasn’t been completely eradicated. It seems to me that type 2 polio virus has become eradicated, but the vaccine virus is still an issue. So is type 2 really eradicated if it is still prevalent in the vaccine virus? I would think not, but I’m not the expert here. Although type 2 being gone is good for us, there are also negative aspects of polio still prevalent today. The oral vaccine (OPV) has become increasingly problematic. Taking the oral vaccine means you are placing living polio virus in you. Although this virus is weakened, it can still cause disease as seen in the previous paragraph. The other option would be the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) that is an inactivated virus that doesn’t cause polio. Another issue many of us have heard of is the anti-vaccination movement. To me, there is no reason to not get vaccinated. Some people against vaccinations believe the disease can’t be that serious if it can be prevented. Excuse me? This article was the first time I ever saw this reason to not get vaccinated and honestly it makes me mad at how unintelligent that sounds. Anything is capable of killing you these days. To hear that anyone would believe just because polio has a vaccine means it is harmless makes no sense. Some virus’ don’t even have antiviral medications that work, so not getting the vaccine could possibly be the reason for someone’s death. In every one of my blog posts I try to stress how important I think getting vaccinated is. If everyone got vaccinated, some of these human only reservoir diseases could be eradicated. Polio’s reservoir for example is only humans. It is so important to read accurate information when it comes to health care. There is so much information out there that is false and not backed up with ample research. Help your future self and children out by always getting vaccinated.