World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the ongoing polio vaccination campaign in Gaza as a “massive success” on Friday, after half a million children in the territory received a first dose, despite the war.
Israel launched a massive polio vaccination drive this week to inoculate Palestinian children in Gaza against the deadly and crippling disease, which was detected in water supplies in the territory earlier this year, during the war.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday that it had discovered poliovirus contaminating water in Gaza, and had therefore brought in vaccines, both for soldiers and the general population. Vaccination for soldiers would be voluntary, it said.
Bill Gates announced his foundation will open an office in Riyadh as Saudi Arabia pledged $500 million to a polio vaccination initiative.
Close to 20,000 migrant children are expected to be absorbed by New York City’s public schools when the school year starts in just days. None of those migrant children will be required to show proof of vaccinations when they enroll, as is required for the children of New Yorkers.
The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said on Friday that over a million polio vaccine doses intended for children have been destroyed during the civil war in Sudan.
A study published on Thursday by the United Nation’s children’s agency UNICEF found a dramatic global decline in public support for childhood vaccination in the years of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
Half of the more than 50,000 border crossers bused to the sanctuary city of New York from Texas are not vaccinated against the often-deadly poliovirus, officials revealed.
Authorities in the UK are set to re-launch a child vaccination campaign in London in response to a polio outbreak in the capital.
Authorities in Jerusalem, New York, and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there. The source? An oral polio vaccine.
New York State public health officials announced Friday that polio was detected in New York City’s wastewater samples and called on unvaccinated residents to receive the vaccination against the infectious disease.
An outbreak of Polio in Sadiq Khan’s London has now prompted a mass vaccination regime for all of the city’s nearly one million children.
New York state Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said a polio case detected in Rockland County could be the “tip of the iceberg” and that hundreds of other individuals could be infected with the disease.
New York and Rockland County health officials confirmed a polio case Thursday, noting the patient was not vaccinated against the highly contagious virus. Authorities note that although the patient recently traveled through Europe, he does reside in a community with a history of vaccine hesitancy which suffered a measles outbreak in 2019.
The “worldwide obsession” with coronavirus vaccine delivery for children led to the unintended consequence of other routine inoculations being de-prioritised, a UK member of Parliament warned Sunday.
Parents living in London have been told to ensure their children are fully immunised against polio after traces of the disease were found in the capital’s sewage system.
Mozambican state health authorities declared a “public health emergency” on Wednesday in an effort to contain a case of wild poliovirus confirmed in a child in the nation’s western Tete province days earlier, the state-run Mozambique News Agency (AIM) reported on Thursday.
First lady Jill Biden and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy kicked off their campaign to encourage child coronavirus vaccinations Monday by visiting the first school to inoculate children against polio in McLean, Virginia.
Microsoft cofounder and billionaire American philanthropist Bill Gates denied offering Nigerian lawmakers a $10 million bribe to pass an infectious disease bill, Nigeria’s Premium Times reported on Monday.
Anti-vaccination campaigners have triggered the return of polio in the Philippines, the country’s Health Secretary Francisco Duque III told reporters on Friday.
Islamist militants who believe doctors have laced doses of polio vaccine with poison to sterilize or kill their children are threatening the doctors out of northwestern Pakistan, Reuters reported Thursday.
Authorities in Pakistan arrested a man on Tuesday for allegedly disseminating false rumors on social media that the anti-polio vaccine led to fainting and vomiting, a move that prompted concerned parents to rush 25,000 children to the hospital and a mob of about 500 people to set fire to a local health center.
Taliban narco-jihadists on Friday announced the launch of their “Victory” spring offensive amid ongoing U.S.-led efforts to convince the terrorist group to agree to a political settlement with Kabul to end the more than 17-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The United Nations-backed Global Polio Eradication Initiative attributed a recent resurgence of the potentially deadly disease in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, home to the one the debilitating virus’ last remaining bastions in the world, to the “unchecked” flow of people across their mutual border, the Guardian reported Wednesday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are chasing expected ballooning numbers of cases of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM).
On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed a case of “acute flaccid myelitis” (AFM) in an unnamed Oklahoma minor.
Medical authorities in Venezuela revealed this weekend that they have recorded the first case of polio, a disease largely eradicated in the developed world, in over 30 years.
Trump reached out to offer McConnell a hand as the pair returned to the Oval Office, a moment that many observers captured on social media.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari may have declared that the war against Boko Haram was “over” in December, but the nation continues to struggle against the Islamic State affiliate’s influence in the region.
TEL AVIV – The Syrian refugee crisis has precipitated a “catastrophic outbreak” of a flesh-eating disease that is spreading across the Middle East and North Africa, according to research published on Thursday in the scientific journal PLOS.
The Afghanistan-Pakistan region is considered to be the last frontier for efforts to eradicate naturally-occurring polio cases, and the Taliban, a terrorist group that operates in both countries, has joined the final fight against the crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is warning that denial of water supplies as a weapon of war could trigger an “epidemic” of any number of diseases in Syria, where the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) continues to battle for territory against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops and an array of rebel fighters.
The government of Sierra Leone received a mere six-day respite from fighting Ebola, as a new case announced today resets the countdown clock to declaring the nation Ebola-free. The body of a 67-year-old woman in remote Kambia district has tested positive for the virus.
Doctors in Port Loko, a northwestern region of Sierra Leone outside Freetown, are reporting a significant drop in the number of mothers bringing their children to hospitals for routine vaccinations. The mothers, they say, fear exposing their children to a resurgent Ebola virus, and in keeping them from hospitals are risking triggering the spread of polio or measles.
The Pakistani government is issuing arrest warrants for parents who refuse to vaccinate their children for polio. Unfortunately, the disease is still endemic to Pakistan.
