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Many poorer countries have relied on cheaper forms of the polio vaccine with a weakened virus, which can sometimes cause small outbreaks. Ironically this fact
by rowanseymour 6y ago
Many poorer countries have relied on cheaper forms of the polio vaccine with a weakened virus, which can sometimes cause small outbreaks.
Ironically this fact is often used the anti-vaxxers as an argument against vaccines.. when it's only been true because polio vaccination has been so successful at eradicating the real virus which was causing considerably more problems.
- tialaramex 6y agoThe oral vaccine is not only cheaper it also works better. This means if you have endemic Polio it can make good sense to deploy OPV even knowing that there is risk of it reverting. The rich industrialised countries that switched to the boring inactivated vaccine don't have endemic Polio so the risk structure is different (as well as being able to afford the more expensive product). It's not entirely clear why OPV is more effective, but perhaps it matters that you eat it (when I was a child it was administered as a sugar lump) and so the attenuated virus is entering the body via the gut, exactly where a real working polio virus infects people. The more expensive killed vaccine is injected into a muscle instead.