443,000 children in Gaza have recently been vaccinated for polio, after the disease re-emerged there. Earlier, the BBC reported that
Israel and Hamas agreed to a series of localized pauses in the fighting to allow health workers to administer vaccines after Gaza’s first confirmed case of polio in 25 years left a 10-month-old partially paralysed last month…..The aim is to vaccinate a total of 640,000 children.
“We need to cover a minimum of 90% of those children to stop the transmission within Gaza and to avoid polio spread, international spread of polio to surrounding countries,” Dr Peeperkorn said. Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious. It can cause disfigurement and paralysis, and is potentially fatal. It mainly affects children under the age of five.
In other news, sloth fever was recently reported in the U.S. That disease is usually not fatal.
Dengue fever — a tropical disease so painful it is also known as “breakbone fever” — has also spread into parts of Florida, Texas, and Arizona. In 2023, there were 11 cases of locally-acquired dengue fever in Florida. It could become much more widespread in the U.S. in the future. It causes some deaths, although in less than 1% of all cases.
Scientists recently developed a vaccine that prevents dengue fever 80% of the time, at least in the short run:
Results of a phase 3 trial in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) show 80% protection for the single-dose tetravalent (four-strain) Butantan-Dengue Vaccine (Butantan D-V) among participants with no evidence of previous dengue exposure and 89% protection in those with a history of exposure.
The vaccine is the culmination of years of research from Brazil’s Butantan Institute, and the study included results from 16 Brazilian centers located in all five regions of the country. Each year at least 1 million Brazilians get infected with dengue…and the fatality rate is 0.9%.
“In June, we’ll complete the five-year follow-up period. Once the data has been consolidated, we’ll know how long the protection induced by the vaccine will last,” said first study author Esper Kallas, PhD in a press release. “If all goes well, we’ll win definitive approval for the vaccine in 2025.” “Butantan Institute’s vaccine has also proved extremely safe for people who have never had dengue, which is an advantage over the vaccines now available on the market,” said researcher Mauricio Lacerda Nogueira, PhD.
Currently, there are two other other dengue vaccines approved for use and recommended by the World Health Organization: Dengvaxia (3 doses) and TAK-003 (2 doses). Dengvaxia, however, is recommended only for use in children and adults ages 9 to 45 with at least one documented case of dengue, as dengue-naive recipients can suffer antibody dependent enhancement if they receive a vaccine prior to a natural infection.
