Jul 21 2011: Devastating floods - with prolonged population displacement - last year in Pakistan seem to have thrown huge reverses to a country whose hard-won advances in polio eradication were fragile. Any predictions about when Pakistan will be able to stop transmission in the more highly populated warmer & lower-land areas that are so conducive to long-seasons of heavy polio transmission?
Do you think that recent news about the developing severe East African drought poses as much danger to polio eradication as the Pakistan floods last year?
Jul 21 2011: Is there any role for an earlier than planned roll-out for the inactivated IPV injectable vaccine in countries like Nigeria, Chad, Mali, Pakistan (while continuing the OPV drop campaign)- that are still struggling to contain outbreaks/transmission. My understanding is that this has been thought to be a relatively bad idea because IPV has much less effect on transmission than OPV and (on its own/without OPV) offers less direct protection as well.
I wish there were someway to combine an inexpensive IPV into a single combination vaccine with the (attenuated) measles vaccine that addresses such a major problem, especially in so much of Africa... It seems like the planned switch to (an inexpensive) IPV in the post-eradication era is going to be a supertough challenge.
Jul 21 2011: One of the key positive developments in recent years - that I think has been under-publicized to both the general and professional communities - has been the development of tools that show that wild polio strains recovered from patients are become much less genetically diverse - it shows that some substrains are being eradicated - relatively slowly but also fairly encouraging. Will we be updated soon about the genetic diversity of the WPV3 strains in W African countries & Chad?
I think the news on genetic analysis of circulating virus is probably as important - if not more so - than the weekly case count summary analysis and other key documents that are very prominent on the polioeradication.org site. It would be great if there were a formal update of this viral genetic analysis every ~6-8 weeks or so.
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A comment on Conversation: Live TED Conversation on Polio Eradication: Join TED Speaker Bruce Aylward on July 21st at 4.30-6.30 pm Central European Time
Do you think that recent news about the developing severe East African drought poses as much danger to polio eradication as the Pakistan floods last year?
A comment on Conversation: Live TED Conversation on Polio Eradication: Join TED Speaker Bruce Aylward on July 21st at 4.30-6.30 pm Central European Time
I wish there were someway to combine an inexpensive IPV into a single combination vaccine with the (attenuated) measles vaccine that addresses such a major problem, especially in so much of Africa... It seems like the planned switch to (an inexpensive) IPV in the post-eradication era is going to be a supertough challenge.
A comment on Conversation: Live TED Conversation on Polio Eradication: Join TED Speaker Bruce Aylward on July 21st at 4.30-6.30 pm Central European Time
I think the news on genetic analysis of circulating virus is probably as important - if not more so - than the weekly case count summary analysis and other key documents that are very prominent on the polioeradication.org site. It would be great if there were a formal update of this viral genetic analysis every ~6-8 weeks or so.