Rumors spark polio vaccine panic in south India

BANGALORE, India (Reuters) - Thousands of parents and their children protested outside hospitals in the southern Indian city of Bangalore following false rumors that children had fallen sick after being given polio drops, police said on Monday.

Police said nobody had fallen ill from the vaccine and filed a complaint against a local TV station, saying it helped spread panic following the rumors of children contracting fever and vomiting.

Police used megaphones to cool tempers at a government hospital on Sunday night where more than 3,000 people had gathered, as traffic slowed to a crawl in parts of the infotech city.

Protesters pushed some doctors and smashed hospital windows, after their children were administered polio drops as part of a government immunization drive launched more than a decade ago.

“They were all worried and aggressive,” Bangalore’s assistant commissioner of police, Ashok Kumar, told Reuters. “It was a difficult situation. They left only after doctors and police officials assured them of their children’s safety.”

A world effort to beat polio has succeeded in slashing the number of cases by 99 percent over the past two decades, but the disease is still endemic in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Suspicions about polio vaccines worsened after a major outbreak in India in 2006, when some Muslims resisted polio drops for their children following rumors that it was part of a Western ploy to sterilize their offspring.

Polio, which is incurable, leads to irreversible paralysis.

India has had 535 polio cases in 2008 so far compared to 471 in the same period last year, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

(Editing by Matthias Williams and Sugita Katyal)

Source

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Posts:


By Tume Ahemba LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria will launch a new campaign to vaccinate millions of children against polio Wednesday in an attempt to curb the spread of the disease that has crippled hundreds this year, the World Health Organization said. Africa’s most populous country, which accounts for more than 50 percent of new polio cases in

Full Post: Nigeria to launch mass polio immunization drive
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An infusion of more than $630 million spearheaded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is intended to help finish the job of eradicating the crippling disease polio, officials said on Wednesday. The Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rotary International charity joined with the governments of Britain and Germany to

Full Post: Bill Gates, others pledge $630 million to beat polio
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Gene Emery BOSTON (Reuters) - A newer vaccine that targets the most common form of the polio virus works up to four times better than the conventional vaccine that tries to protect against all three types of the crippling disease, researchers said on Wednesday. The monovalent vaccine may help speed the fight to eradicate polio, U.S.

Full Post: Newer vaccine seen as better for polio hot spots
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHICAGO (Reuters) - There has been no human case of mad cow disease in the Texas panhandle area in the past month, the Texas Department of State Health Services said on Wednesday in response to rumors in Chicago markets of a woman patient there with the disease. Cattle futures plummeted at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange amid

Full Post: No human mad cow case in Texas panhandle: officials
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABUJA (Reuters) - Two dozen children have died and nine have fallen ill in Nigeria during the last three weeks after being given teething syrup, the health minister said on Tuesday. Dr. Hassan Lawal ordered a government investigation into the deaths and urged parents to suspend using teething mixtures. “All parents, especially mothers, have been advised to

Full Post: Teething syrup suspected of killing 24 Nigerian kids

Site Navigation

Most Read

Search

Contact

  • kinwrite.com@gmail.com