A day after the discovery of vaccine derived polio virus in a drain near Amberpet, here, the health administration in Telangana has planned a massive vaccination drive for children aged between six weeks and 3 years from June 20 to June 26, targeting 3.5 lakh children.
For the drive, the State is said to be procuring vaccines from Tamil Nadu as the former does not have the required quantities of the vaccine.
Some city doctors claimed there has been a shortage of the injectable polio vaccine (IPV) since the end of last year. IPV delivers an inactivated virus into the body to induce immunity against three polio virus types while the Oral Polio Vaccine delivers a weakened, but live virus to the body.
“Without injectables, physicians in the private sector continue to administer oral vaccine. After the switch in April to the bivalent vaccine from the earlier oral trivalent vaccine, it was absolutely essential to have IPV which is the only available defence against type 2 polio,” said Dr. Arif Ahmed, a pedantic allergist and former member on National Executive Board of India Academy of Pediatrics.
Bivalent variationThe ‘switch’ involved replacing the earlier variant of oral vaccine, containing live type 1, 2 and 3 viruses, with a newer bivalent variant that contains only type 1 and type 3.
Type 2 was dropped to reduce the scope for vaccine-derived infections in India.
