Are NON Polio Enteroviruses taking over to cause a 10 times increase in the no. of total AFP in India ?

Dear Dr. Sood, Thanks for the comment. May be now focus need to be on NPEV not only for polio but for other diseases caused by polio like enteroviruses!ThanksDr. Omesh BhartiM.B.B.S.,D.H.M.,M.A.E.(Epidemiology)Directorate of Health Safety and Regulation, Himachal Pradesh+91-9418120302[[email protected]][email protected][/email]; [email protected]

This is good to initiate such a brain storming and thought given discussions. In my personal opinion though paralysis due to majority of the cases is polio like but fortunately this paralysis in not permanent and in very few or nominal numbers may remain with somewhat residual weakness at 90 days. It can be one of the topic for the future discussion but with current challenges of preventive medicine and public health, many others have to be prioritized like EPI preventable diseases for elimination and eradication, the Acute Watery Diarrhoea, now HINI, Bird Flue and many more. We hope that our future strategies may change help in undertaking steps in such directions after we have managed the major challenges effecticelyRegardsHassan

Friends, This interesting and thought provking piece is a pionter to the fact that the public health problem is paralysis, not just a poliomyelitis virus. If NPEV are causing a large chunk of the residual parlaysis, we need to take it up a research priority for vaccine development, and the GOAL has to be broader in scope- "ELIMINATION of CHILDHOOD PARALYSIS". Non polio AFP also need to be looked into if we really want to make a healthier society. Moroever Ethical concerns also emanate from the fact that disease surveillance is not linked to rehabilitation, and the data is used only to serve the EPI programme goals. We need serious thinking, How many of the AFP cases with residual paralysis in India, still have residual paralysis now? What measures can be taken and have ben taken to rehabilitate them ? -- Dr RK Sood (Masters in Applied Epidemiology) [[email protected]][email protected][/email], [[email protected]][email protected][/email] District AIDS Project Officer, # 402 C, ZH Dharmashala, HP. 176215, India +91 9418064077, +91 1892-225559 Let's join hands to remove stigma from HIV and increase access to services for universal access.  

Dear Sir, Elimination of childhood paralysis was not addressed in toto since there was no data available when polio elimination strategies were worked out. After making some level of progress we started looking at a bigger dimention of the problem. Naturally you would record more cases as the polio vaccination programme continues since non Polio-AFP cases are looked into. Another angle to the problem would be to look into whether natural polio infection ws giving some sort of protection to the other non-polio infections and kept the prevalance of the of these to lower levels. This can be worked out from the epidemiological data available. Strategies could only be worked out after clearly demarcating the culprits involved. I can not comment much onthis issue since the mail does not have any attachment. Regards, Nagaraj