The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) and health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi have announced that seven children have been paralyzed by a polio vaccine linked to the nOPV2 polio vaccine developed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Gates Foundation, a GPEI partner, funded the development and clinical trials of the nOPV2 vaccine. Vaccine-induced polio outbreaks are not unexpected with the nOPV2 vaccine, GPEI said. While the discovery of these outbreaks is a tragedy for affected families and communities, it is not unexpected given the widespread use of vaccines.
Oral vaccines, used in much of Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia, contain a live but weakened form of the polio virus modified to reduce its ability to paralyze. Children vaccinated with live oral vaccines shed the virus in their stools, which eventually end up in sewage. Especially in places with poor sanitation, the virus can be passed from child to child, which actually helps protect the community, according to GPEI.
However, as it continues to circulate for 12 to 18 months, the weakened virus in live oral vaccine strains can return to virulence, circulate, infect and paralyze “in sites of low immunization rates.” These viruses are called circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses or cVDPVs.
Burundi declared a state of emergency after eight confirmed cases of the virus and five samples from environmental monitoring of wastewater, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced. The country plans to launch a polio vaccination campaign in the coming weeks, aiming to vaccinate all eligible children aged 0-7 against the virus. Burundian health authorities also plan to work with the WHO and GPEI on a risk assessment to determine the extent of the vaccine-induced virus outbreak. And they are stepping up polio surveillance, with WHO staff taking additional water samples and possibly opening new environmental monitoring sites.
Dr. Ananda Bandiopadhyai, deputy director of technology, research and analytics at the Gates Foundation, said: “We are disappointed. Every outbreak like this is disappointing.”
The nOPV vaccines for poliovirus types 1 and 3, called nOPV1 and nOPV3, are in clinical trials, according to the EPGI. In an email to The Defender, Dr. Brian Hooker, Ph.D., PE, chief scientific officer of Children’s Healthcare and professor of biology at Simpson University, said, “It is tragic but not unexpected that the use of live Sabin vaccine is would cause the spread of vaccine-induced poliomyelitis given the propensity of these viruses to mutate back to their paralytic form. Even more alarmingly, the paralytic form is now circulating among the child population of Congo and Burundi.”
The Gates Foundation is the largest funder of polio initiatives in the world. The Gates Foundation, in addition to funding the nPOV2 vaccine, GPEI, and WHO, also funds Rotary International, UNICEF, Gavi, and the CDC Foundation. The Gates Foundation also funds NPR and the NPR blog, which has published numerous articles on VDPV2 and paved the way for Gates’ nPOV2 vaccine as a solution.
Critics have noted that Gates funding not only directs money to this single issue, but also requires commitments of funding, personnel and other resources from recipient countries. As a result, the continued focus on polio is disproportionate to needs, diverting resources from other health problems and diseases. The Lancet published a criticism of Gates back in 2009.
Despite the approval of the new nOPV2 vaccine by the WHO and the Strategic Advisory Group of Immunization Experts (SAGE), it has been linked to outbreaks of vaccine-associated poliomyelitis. Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, along with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), announced Thursday that seven children have been paralyzed by vaccine-derived polio related to the nOPV2 polio vaccine developed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. . The foundation, a partner of GPEI, funded the development and clinical trials of the nOPV2 vaccine.
Afghanistan and Pakistan now report more cases of paralysis from vaccine-induced polio than from the wild virus, and there have been several outbreaks of vaccine-induced infections across Africa, with more than 1,000 children paralyzed in 2020 alone, according to a study in the BMJ. In 2022, 800 children contracted paralytic polio from the vaccine.
The Gates Foundation is the largest funder of polio initiatives in the world. In April 2013, Bill Gates said that eradicating polio was his “top priority,” even though at the time there were only 19 cases worldwide that year. Since Gates made this commitment, billions of dollars around the world have been invested in this cause.
The Gates Foundation is one of several partners in the GPEI public-private partnership, which also includes WHO, UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Gavi and Rotary International. The Gates Foundation, in addition to funding the nPOV2 vaccine, GPEI, and WHO, also funds Rotary International, UNICEF, Gavi, and the CDC Foundation.
In the wake of the Gates Foundation’s role in the COVID-19 outbreak, many more people today are expressing similar concerns.
The impact of the Gates Foundation is enormous and not only in the field of vaccines.
In the agricultural sector, for example, he advocated genetically modified crops, which some experts believe are dangerous and harmful to the environment and human health.
