Tuesday, June 20, 2006

From a CDC website link

NNii. Vaccine Information: "Two types of polio vaccine (OPV, oral polio vaccine, and IPV, inactivated polio vaccine) were created in the 1950s. Both were highly effective in preventing polio. Initially OPV was preferred because it helped to increase community immunity to polio.

However, about 1 out of 2.4 million doses of OPV distributed in the United States actually caused vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP). In an effort to reduce this terrible side effect, a new polio vaccine schedule was recommended in 1997 (two doses of IPV followed by two doses of OPV). The new schedule decreased, but did not guarantee elimination, of vaccine-induced paralytic polio; so, effective in the year 2000, an all-IPV schedule was recommended, and OPV is no longer administered in the U.S. OPV continues to be used in countries where wild polio infections still occur."

It's the mOPV form that is about to be distributed in Namibia.

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