Vaccine switch urged for polio endgame. Inactivated virus vaccine could deliver the final blow.
By sunrise on a warm December morning, Janila Shulu’s team are out in
the dirt roads and alleyways of Ungwan Rimi, a poor neighbourhood in a
predominantly Muslim section of Kaduna city in northern Nigeria. Three
female health workers, accompanied by a community leader, dart from
house to house, squeezing a few drops of polio vaccine into the mouths
of all the young children they can find, even those who pass by on the
street. By 1 p.m., after giving hundreds of doses, they stop for the
day — the first of a national five-day effort.
Such campaigns are the backbone of the global push to eradicate polio,
but this month the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, proposed a shift in vaccination strategy from oral vaccines to injected ones that may have to be administered in clinics. The
change is needed to mop up the last remaining pockets of polio, but
experts say that it poses challenges in places such as Kaduna city,
which have poor access to health care.
