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March 15, 2002

"Polio Outbreak in Caribbean Blamed on Low Rate of Immunization, Mutation of Virus in Vaccine" Associated Press (www.ap.org) (03/15/02); Recer, Paul

Researchers report in the current issue of Science that an outbreak of polio in Haiti and the Dominican Republic has been linked to a weakened virus in a vaccine that mutated and then spread among poorly vaccinated children.  The two countries were declared polio-free in the 1980s; but both nations reported cases of the disease in 2000, with 13 children infected in the Dominican Republic and eight cases, including two deaths, in Haiti.  According to Olen M. Kew of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention--which, along with the Pan American Health Organization, investigated the situation--the outbreak was the result of unprotected children coming into contact with children who had received the oral vaccine.  Kew explained that if the community has high vaccine coverage, the virus does not normally spread from person to person; however, there was a false sense of security in Haiti because natural polio had been eliminated, and the rate of polio vaccination in some villages was allowed to drop to 7 percent, and after the introduced polio virus infected a poorly vaccinated population, it mutated, becoming more virulent.

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