Nodding Disease

[FluffyMcDeath]

This came up in the news feed briefly but has long fallen into oblivion. It's an interesting and devastating case of the emergence of a new disease, or a new pathology of an old disease. It is also an tragic look at the kind of things that already poor people with hard lives have to endure. While "we" would like to help the collective "we" wants much more to shoot other people's children for oil - but that is a totally different debate.

This disease is strange and new and frightening and is much more of a threat to the children of Uganda than Kony is (or their own government).

 

[redrumloa]

Let me guess, Bill Gates came to town with "vaccines"?

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Let me guess, Bill Gates came to town with "vaccines"?

No, that's not it. Though paralysis from the vaccine and from shed vaccine virus that regains virulence is a problem it is also a sign of success and I don't mean that cynically. When the wild virus falls to such levels that it becomes the smaller of the causes that is a good thing. However, then the strategy gets tricky because you may now cause more harm by vaccinating than by not - except that if you stop vaccinating then the wild virus will come back and nobody wants that.

No easy answers.

Meanwhile nodding disease demonstrates how many novel diseases are waiting out there for us, either now or to evolve in the future, and how difficult it is to figure out what is going wrong. As a species we have huge resources of brain power, energy, communication and computation but we invest only a tiny amount of that on science. More brainpower goes into playing angry birds.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Never mind about what I said about no easy answers. For the polio problem there is a relatively easy answer. India uses OPV and the west uses IPV. The Oral Polio Vaccine uses a weakened virus which can regain virulence by mutation. The Inactivated or Injectable Polio Vaccine uses a killed virus which still promotes an immune response but no live virus is involved so no disease can result.

India's problem is that the OPV is cheaper than the IPV. So, there are no CHEAP answers. India needs to switch over to IPV to eradicate polio but will need to keep up IPV vaccination until other countries have eradicated the disease too.

It all comes down to money - a lack of resources.