Pulse Polio Vaccination is a medical programme organized with a lot of publicity and awareness by the government. You might remember the TV advertisements where the Hindi cinema super star Amitabh Bhachan calls people to give polio vaccination to their little kids. In this interview with Dr. Hari, he questions the credibility of this programme. Dr. Hari is a social activist and a practicing homeo doctor from Vayanad in Kerala. He is actively involved in Anti Polio Vaccination programme and raising awareness on the subject.
Incidentally just some time before I did the following interview, four little kids died because of the anti-measles vaccination in Thiruvallur in Tamil Nadu state. Also fifteen kids are hospitalized for the same reason.
The government itself is raising awareness through advertisements to promote pulse polio vaccination with showing it's positive results. So what prompted you to work against polio vaccination?
It is the same kind of advertisements that you talked about which eventually lead me to this. It is widely known that all existing vaccinations have dangerous reactions and this information can be seen even in our medical school textbooks. But the government is insisting that our little kids should take vaccination. Knowing the consequences of vaccination, I decided to talk against it as a doctor and as a social activist.
What are the prime accusations against the polio vaccination? What are the side effects?
The vaccine that is used for polio vaccination is OPV (Oral Polio Vaccination). This OPV is a live attenuated vaccine (LAV). It means that the vaccine contains weakened forms of the organism that causes the disease. Because of that this vaccine could cause dangerous reactions in kids who have low resisting power and can even cause death. There are two types of side effects which is officially acknowledged - VAPP (Vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis) and VDPV (Vaccine-derived polioviruses). Also some sudden deaths due to allergic reactions have been reported.
It should be noted that the doctors like Jacob John, Jacob M Puliyil, Rinu Patel etc who head this vaccination programme in Kerala are aware of the dangers of VAPP and VDPV and have admitted it. That is when the government itself is advertising this programme and slaps it on our children. Even if we agree just for the debate sake that the vaccination theory is correct, there is no justification in medical science about giving this medicine continuously or more than once.
Do you think the government medical agencies/programmes are aware of the dangers of vaccination? If so, do you think there is some kind of hidden agenda in running this programme continuously?
There is no doubt that they are aware of the side effects. It is the WHO (World Health Organization) that develops such programme and implement it in third-world countries. And no such countries (like India) are conducting any quality check or screening test of these medicines. The multi-national pharma companies import the medicines with a certification and they pack and label the medicines in their units here in India.
There are some conspiracy theories against the big pharmaceutical companies pointing out their connections in political and financial sphere. Are they exporting these medicines only to the under-developed nations?
Yes, they export it mainly to under-developed and poor nations. That is their best market. Only seven countries in the world conduct such vaccination programmes. All these eradication programmes are purely based on the business interests. No disease can be controlled with vaccines.
There has been a terrible incident today in Tamil Nadu today. Four little kids died due to an anti-measles vaccination programme and fifteen more are hospitalized. What do you say about that?
I haven't learnt the exact details of the incident. But I see this in two ways. There is an initiative being done under the leadership of WHO and our government to shut down the vaccine producing factories in India saying that they do not meet the standards of WHO. They have decided to build a vaccine park in Chennai with participation of the private sector. This decision has invited protests from the people who watch the medical scene in India. So in the first reading of the news of Tamil Nadu incident, I doubt if it was contaminated vaccine distributed in this case to weaken the protests against the vaccine park.
Even if we ignore this thought, it is possible that the children died because of the side effects of vaccines (and it has happened before). As per the information that I received, it is not anti-measles, but chicken pox vaccine. But some evening newspapers reported that it is polio vaccine. We are in touch with Chennai and hope to get the right information by tomorrow morning (25th April).
Note: Dr. Hari says that it is only in Kerala (in India) that the polio vaccination is given in two doses. In many other states, the vaccine is given many a times and the children who are given such multiple doses are more prone to be sick. He believes that it is because of the anti-polio vaccination efforts of his and others that lead to reduce the number of times the vaccine is given in Kerala.
What the government has told about polio vaccination is that it has helped to eliminate polio from our society. They also present a lot of statistics to prove this. So are you saying that polio vaccination has not produced any positive results?
Yes, not only that, we can see the the flaws in their statistics if we analyze it deeply. Suppose if a disease is cured by a particular medicine, the incident graph of the disease should go down from the time of medication. Isn't it? This is a simple logic that even a little child would understand. But after this (vaccination) programme initiated in 1995, the disease rate has only increased in India. It was told in the beginning (of the vaccination programme) that the disease will be eradicated at once. Even after 13 years of the wide supply of the medicine (through the programme), 200 new cases have reported in India this year and remember that only 3 months have passed in this year.
There are some interesting points in their statistics. The cases reported with the disease named AFP (Acute Flaccid Paralysis) was considered as Polio until 1999. For example, if a child's legs are paralyzed (in India until 1999), it was considered as Polio. It is only after the wide supply of polio vaccination that they begun to identify the polio virus. There are around 50 types of paralysis diseases that comes within AFP itself. So one major reason to produce such statistics (that shows decreased rate of polio) is because of the change in diagnosing the disease. Because of that the number of cases reported under AFP diseases have skyrocketed since 1999. There were zero AFP cases in 1995, but now there are more than 30,000 - 40,000 cases. In 2005, 27,044 cases were reported. 13, 268 cases in 2004 and 1,005 cases were reported in 1996. This not just the case of India. All countries who organize polio vaccination programmes have such increase rate in AFP cases.
The common public is too afraid of polio. What are the possible ways to prevent polio other than vaccination?
I think that fear in public was consciously created. Polio is a disease that affects only below 5% of the children under the age of 5. And only 1% of this 5% is affected with the acute paralysis type of polio virus. These facts are told by medical texts and statistics. In the other 4% of the 5%, the virus comes and goes after some clinical cases. So those exaggerated figures are wrong.
We can even prove these from the textbooks. The textbooks of medical students mention that the failure rate of 5% has increased to 30% in the late 60's. It means that the medicine (vaccine) which is given for a disease that has only 1% of probability, is not 30% effective. So the question is why are they giving such medicines to our children?
Note: According to Dr. Hari, When the government doctors went on strike in 1999 to demand a salary hike (under their organization KGMOA), they had arranged press meetings and questioned the scientific basis of polio vaccination. They said that such a programme is not needed in Kerala and they wouldn't support the programme. But once their salary issues were settled in 2000, they conducted a press meeting and offered complete co-operation for the next polio vaccination programme. Dr. Hari says that people should bring these doctors for a public trial in the streets.
What do you do to raise public awareness in this case?
There are only very few people who have come to take part in this. We have to face the big forces who have very clear business interest in the vaccination programme. The ordinary people in our society has no idea about the health sector. For them, the last word in everything related to health comes from the doctors, and government doctors within that group and alopathic doctors to be particular. Obviously, there are some limits to the awareness campaigns conducted by people like us. Even then, in Kamabalakkad village (in Vayanad district in Kerala), people have boycotted this medicine. We are facing many law suits from the government's part because of that. We conduct, seminars, debates, discussions, processions and we use all campaign tools. We have distributed notices in the inaugural functions of the vaccination programme. We have participated in health seminars and asked questions to the bodies to make the attendees be aware of the whole thing. We have published articles and books. We also use modern technologies like Internet to do the campaigning.
Note: Those who have more questions on polio vaccination or need clarifications on the same can use the following contact information to get in touch with Dr. Hari.
Dr. Hari,
Pulse Polio Viruddha Samithi
Kambalakkaad P O
Vayanad District
Kerala - INDIA.
Phone (Dr. Hari): 04936285865
Phone (Sajan): 9446279596
Also visit http://poliovaccinemyth.blogspot.com
My special thanks to Dr. Hari for taking time to have this conversation.
An audio version of the following interview will be posted in M-Pod, the Malayalam podcast by tomorrow.
(Image courtesy: Times Now)
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Polio has nearly been eradicated in the United States. As far as I know, We no longer use OPV. There are risks with any vaccine. I wish vaccines were 100% safe but the medical world has not yet come up with a solution to make this possible. To attend public schools in the US all students must have received their required vaccines.
Dear Joe,
I would like to add my views here. I don’t have any deep knowledge about the subject or any data to prove my arguments.
In my opinion this debate about vaccination and method of treatments are there in between these two branches of modern medical science; Allopathy and Homeopathy. I am a person who takes Homeopathic medicines. I do believe that Homeopathic medicines are very effective. But there are some situations where I am forced to take Allopathic medicines. When I need immediate relief I depends Allopathy.
Homeopaths say that there is no need of vaccination for those children who regularly take Homeopathic medicines. But I believe that it is a fact that by vaccination we have irradiated many diseases like smallpox. So I believe vaccination is effective.
There are peoples who have reaction to many Allopathic medicines. Most of these medicines have common allergy symptoms printed on their cover. I cannot take antibiotics like amoxicillin. But I think there are no such complaints with Homeopathic medicines.
This may be the same with Oral Vaccine that we use for Polio Vaccination. While we are applying medicine for a large volume of children there are chances of such incidents. It is always the duty of government to assure the quality of medicines that are used for such programs. The overdose medicine and the weakened form of organisms in these vaccines can be a cause for unfortunate death of children with low immunity.
Joe; when I read your note about the double stand of government doctors during and after the strike for salary hike it remind me about the pro HLL strike conducted by the Kerala Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopanasamithy a few years ago. During those days all products marketed by Hindustan Liver was hazardous according to KVVES. But when that strike was over they began sell more products of HLL.
I am very much concerned about the statements that we are hearing from personalities like Dr. Hari who are from the medical field. These debates between various branches of medical science will confuse common man like me. I am one among those ordinary men who takes the advice of doctors as advice from God. I do believe that consensus between doctors is a better option to solve these issues.
Jo,
Sounds like a lot of junk science to me from a homeopath. Face it - homeopathy can't "cure" smallpox, tetanus or diphteria or polio.
Polio is eradicated in most of Western countries. If the quality of the vaccines is suspect then yes, the labs making them have to be pulled up.
When doctors like Dr. Hari mislead public like this against vaccines they are doing a lot of disservice.
Had no clue about this. Thanks for the article.
>> Marsha: Thanks for the info, Marsha. I was really scared that if Dr. Hari's claims are true, it is a great danger. But he is also a homeopath, so am not sure if this has something to do with the long time rivalry between homeopath docs with alopathy docs. :-) Anyways, I thought I would put it as a blog post so that there can be more discussions and the reader can decide which is true.
>> Manikandan: What you said is true, Mani. I also often get confused by which way to go! I have used homeo only once (when some allergetic cough came up) and it was cured in a week's time (prior to that I had consulted with a couple of allopathic docs and took meds for sometime, but it didn't work out). Other than that, I have resorted only on allopathy. But Dr. Hari's claims make me think twice, but even then there is confusion because these two sectors of the doctors always say their own side is safe. What good for the society is something like you suggested - consensus between doctors.
>> ggop: Thanks for the visit and your comment.
An informative post Jo! Thanks...