Feb 26, 2013

Policeman killed in fresh attack on polio team.

PESHAWAR: A policeman was shot dead Tuesday while protecting a polio vaccination team, police said, bringing the death toll in such attacks to 20 since December.
 
No one has claimed responsibility for the killings.

Tuesday’s killing happened at Ghalla Dher on the outskirts of the northwestern town of Mardan, on the second day of a three-day local anti-polio campaign.

“The female vaccinators went inside a house to administer the polio drops. A police guard accompanying the team was waiting outside,” Mardan district police chief Danishwar Khan told AFP.

“Two people came on a motorbike. They opened fire and shot the policeman dead,” he added.

Feb 19, 2013

Scientists have created new strains of polio.

New Polio Strains That Protect Vaccine Factory Workers. Scientists have created new strains of polio intended to protect workers in factories that make polio vaccine. The new strains have the same ability to invoke an immune reaction as the live viruses now used to make vaccine do, but there is virtually no risk anyone will get polio if one of the new strains somehow escapes. 

Continue reading  www.nytimes.com

Feb 7, 2013

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, apologises and vows to tackle NHS 'complacency'.

The prime minister has formally apologised for the care scandal at the Mid Staffordshire NHS hospital trust and announced immediate moves to improve patient care, increase accountability of hospitals and tackle a culture of "complacency" in the NHS.

Among the fast-tracked reforms were proposals that hospital boards could be suspended for ongoing serious care failures; an element of performance-related pay for nurses would be introduced; a new chief inspector of hospitals modelled on the Ofsted inspection agency for schools; and an inquiry into hospitals with the highest mortality rates nationwide.

Read more  www.guardian.co.uk

Egypt. The Health Ministry plans to start a special campaign of polio vaccination.

The Health Ministry's preventative medicine department issued a state of alert regarding the discovery of the polio virus in the sewers of Cairo's Hagana district.

The ministry is responding by vaccinating children in the district, and plans to launch a nationwide vaccination campaign next.

 “We have vaccinated 150,000 children in the area,” said Abdel Ati Alim, undersecretary for preventive medicine, adding that the ministry would vaccinate 3 million children starting in March in Shubra, Khanka, Kerdasa and the outskirts of Cairo and Giza. The campaign would then go countrywide to vaccinate 12 million more children.
 

Feb 3, 2013

Afghanistan - Khost province records 3 positive polio cases.

KHOST CITY (PAN): Southeastern Khost province recorded three new positive polio cases. Health officials confirmed presence of poliomyelitis in three vaccinated children in a district near the Pakistani border.

The affected children belonged to a village in the Qalander district that lies near the Pakistani border, Public Health Director Dr. Amir Badsha Mangal said, adding it remained unclear how the virus got to Khost which has been polio-free since 2002.

He said the affected children had been administered polio drops during a campaign aimed at left-over and migrated children.

World Health Organization (WHO) official in Khost, Dr. Daud Shah believed the virus made its journey through the long border between Khost and northern Waziristan region of Pakistan.

Recently, 23 positive cases were registered in northern Waziristan, he said.

www.thefrontierpost.com

Year’s first polio case detected in Pakistan.

KARACHI, Feb 1: This year’s first case of polio in the country was detected in a two-year-old boy in Karachi on Friday. This was the first polio case in the city after one and a half years.

Musharraf, son of Usman, is a resident of Cattle Colony in Bin Qasim Town. The boy has never been vaccinated against polio.

“This family had old misconceptions about polio vaccination and had repeatedly been recorded as a ‘refusal’ in anti-polio campaigns, the regular vaccination drives as well as special anti-polio campaigns,” expanded program for immunisation (EPI) of Sindh director Dr Mazhar Khamesani said.
 
“They are willing for vaccination now, but there is no use of it when the boy has been crippled for life,” he said.

According to Dr Khamesani, the family sought medical help when the boy fell ill with fever and weakness.

“His samples were sent to the National Institute of Health on Jan 14 and the results have been received today,” he added.

Read more  www.dawn.com