UN VACCINATION PROGRAM BACKFIRES IN AFRICA Cliff Kincaid and Kihura Nkuba World AIDS Day was December 2 and a predictable round of stories appeared about how the disease is devastating Africa. But a prominent Ugandan media personality says that people with AIDS in Africa are being killed by a risky and dangerous live polio vaccine that has been prohibited in the U.S. To make matters worse, Kihura Nkuba said Western nations are largely ignoring another devastating killer in Africa - malaria. So-called "National Immunization Days" are common in African countries because of the threat of disease and death. State Ministries of Health conduct these campaigns with the assistance of the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers of Disease control. But Nkuba, who operated Greater African Radio, was told back in 1997 that many deaths were occurring among children after being vaccinated with the polio vaccine. He discovered that many of them were already sick, some with HIV, and that the polio vaccine they were given came from a French firm that warned not to give it to immune-compromised individuals because it can make a sick person even sicker, and that such an individual can spread it to others. This was the oral polio vaccine that contains a live virus that can cause polio in some rare cases. He also learned that Americans were being given an inactivated polio virus vaccine that is far safer. It is also more expensive. Nkuba found the situation scandalous because there had not been any cases of polio in Uganda for years. He said malaria, which is killing millions, deserves the kind of attention being lavished by the United Nations and the U.S. Government on polio. "If you want to help children," he said, "why begin with a disease they don't have? Why not look for something that is killing them, and save them from that?" He added, "You don't begin with a rare disease and spend all of the government's meager resources fighting polio, which is not a threat to most people, and then ignore something which is killing them in large numbers." In Uganda, malaria kills more people than HIV/AIDS. While there are a few people with immune problems who are at increased risk of getting polio from the vaccine, Dr. Steve Cochi, Director of Polio Eradication at the CDC, insisted "there is no scientific evidence that the oral polio vaccine has any detrimental effects on persons who are HIV-infected." He said the oral polio vaccine, OPV, has been used since 1974, and is still in use in many countries around the world. He said there is "no basis" for Nkuba's complaints. But the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices said the IPV, or inactivated polio vaccine, is the "vaccine of choice" for children with HIV. The Immunization Action Organization and the Journal of the American Medical Association say the IAV is the only polio vaccine recommended for HIV-positive persons and their contacts. For raising these questions, Nkuba says he was taken off the air and run off the road by people who wanted him dead. He says people today in Uganda are being given the OPV at the point of a barrel of a gun. Steve Cochi of CDC said he doubted that was true.              Printer-friendly version Click here to be added to our mailing list.