Litchi toxin kills over 100 children in Muzaffarpur
The death of over 100 children in about a month in Muzaffarpur district of north Bihar due to low blood sugar level is caused by a toxin present in litchi…
Category: Polio
India eradicated wild polio virus but at what cost
Despite oral polio vaccine causing vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) and vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) cases, India did not switch over from OPV to inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). While circulating VDPV strains…
Polio outbreaks in Congo raise global concern
The polio endgame is proving to be much more challenging with 28 children becoming paralysed by the circulating type 2 vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPVs) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has…
Number of wild poliovirus cases drop in Pakistan, Afghanistan
In the last six months, there have been only eight wild-type poliovirus (type 1 and type 3) cases reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan, down from 32 cases during the same…
Waking up to MCPG toxin’s role in causing litchi mystery disease
There is evidence that as late as March 2014, Delhi’s National Centre for Disease Control, India (NCDC) and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta (CDC) researchers were in the…
Litchi: Controversy erupts over Muzaffarpur mystery disease study
The scientist who investigated the mystery disease that proved fatal for many 15-year old children in Muzaffarpur, Bihar at the instance of the State government has raised ethics issues about…
Top health stories of 2016
On the health front, the year 2016 witnessed a few setbacks and but also a few positive developments. Here are the most important health developments of 2016 1. Trial results…
When the media created the ‘wild’ type-2 polio virus
The last case of wild type-2 poliovirus was seen in West Bengal way back in 1999. Since then no child in the world has been stuck by wild type-2 poliovirus…
