Need to revisit the Oral Polio Vaccine initiative in India

The fact that Oral Polio Vaccine can create polio in otherwise healthy children is still kept out of public discussion even as GOI went ahead with the programme 11years ago in 1995. Both IMA and the NPSP now acknowledge that Vaccine Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis (VAPP) is a problem. The complex classification system that NPSP chose to adopt resulted in masking all instances of childhood paralytic diseases in India including VAPP related deaths, cVDPV and non- polio paralysis cases, in favor of confirmed polio cases that never formed more than 3% of the AFP cases chosen by NPSP. In addition it resulted in a large and unknown number of paralyzed children all across the country that were never tested. The paper argues that the GOI should apologize to the nation for hiding truth from public, that all children who developed polio in the post 1995 era are paid compensation, and that the scope of NPSP be expanded to include all children with any paralytic disease including VAPP. While criticizing NPSPs approach to club individual types of instances into monolithic categories, it argues that all children with AFP should be diagnosed fully. It exhorts GOI to make use of the infrastructure created by NPSP to further our national interests, and hopes that alternative medical systems find a genuine solution to the problem of childhood paralysis in India, so as to short-circuit the complications caused by such vaccination drives.

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