Victory for vaccines as strain of polio is wiped out
No country in Europe has been more blighted by the malign anti-MMR epidemic than Italy. And as SUE REID found, it’s led to bitter divisions — and a deadly toll
EXPERTS are celebrating a major victory for vaccination, with officials expected to announce a key breakthrough in the war against polio today.
Scientists will confirm that the second of the three strains of the polio virus has been wiped out.
The eradication of ‘wild polio virus type 3’ – known as ‘WPV3’ – leaves only one polio strain left in circulation. It is only the third virus to be eradicated in history, after smallpox was defeated in 1980 and wild polio virus type 2 (WPV2) in 2015.
The Daily Mail is campaigning for increased uptake of childhood jabs in Britain, where immunisation rates are falling despite the country’s huge success in vaccinating children in the past.
Polio was eradicated in the UK 40 years ago in one of the most successful health interventions ever conducted, and other countries followed suit in wiping it out soon after. But experts warn the job is not finished, with the WPV1 form of polio still circulating in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan – where it is on the rise.
And in a stark example of how things can go backwards, in 2017 and 2018 there was an outbreak in Syria, which had been polio-free for 14 years. Earlier this year it reappeared in the Philippines and just yesterday the World Health Organisation announced a two-year-old boy had been paralysed from polio in Zambia – the first case in the country since 1995.
Dr Doug Brown, of the British Society for Immunology, which is backing the Mail’s campaign, said: ‘The global eradication of WPV3 represents a tremendous step forward in the fight against polio and it means that only type 1 of the wild virus is still circulating and causing infections.
‘Vaccination is one of the safest and most effective methods we have to save lives and stop the spread of disease. According to the World Health Organisation, more than 18 million people have been saved from paralysis thanks to the global vaccination efforts against polio.’
Polio – which is extremely contagious – is still part of the UK childhood vaccination programme. Uptake of the vaccine is relatively high – with 92.1 per cent of babies last year having had three doses of the jab by the age of 16 weeks.
But that is down from 93.4 per cent two years earlier, and is well short of the 95 per cent recommended by experts.
Before a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, up to 8,000 children were paralysed with polio in the UK each year and up to 750 died. Dr Charlie Weller, head of vaccines at the Wellcome Trust, said British parents had forgotten the horror of polio and other preventable diseases.
‘Like many other people, I grew up in an environment where I didn’t see polio, rotavirus or diphtheria. Complacency comes about when you don’t remember.’
The Mail is campaigning to improve the uptake of all childhood immunisations, after an NHS report last month revealed uptake had fallen for every jab.
schoolchildren. ‘ No jabs. No school,’ became the slogan.
But last year, the Health Ministry introduced a temporary caveat allowing children to stay in school if their parents merely promised they had been vaccinated. A doctor’s note was not needed. The government, at the time run by the anti- Establishment Five Star Movement, was condemned for going ‘back to the Middle Ages’.
During the country’s 2018 general election campaign, the Movement and the hard-Right Lega party, led by outspoken Matteo Salvini, doggedly opposed compulsory jabs. When the two parties formed a new government in June last year, Salvini called the vaccinations ‘useless, in some cases dangerous if not harmful,’ without saying why. The former Italian PM Matteo Renzi has said Five Star’s policy was ‘ crazy’, adding: ‘They need to renounce their “no-vax” stance. Science is right, they are wrong.’
The temporary caveat expired in March and today all Italian state school pupils must again present certificates proving they’ve had ten vaccines against common childhood diseases. Four additional jabs, including those combating some forms of meningitis, are free, but not compulsory.
This policy of compulsory vaccination, which the British government has distanced itself from for fear it is too divisive and risks galvanising anti- vaxxers into action, is too late for Italian parents who have lost a child because they were not vaccinated.
One is Antonella Salimbene, 41, who lives near Milan. A carer for the elderly, her daughter, Azzurra, died aged 11 from meningitis C. Choking back tears, she told the Mail this week: ‘I gave my daughter life and then took it away from her. Azzurra had all the vaccinations apart from this one for meningitis. It had just been introduced when she was about to go to nursery.
‘The doctor told me it wasn’t necessary and he was not giving it to his own children. I trusted the doctor, but he was wrong.’
Azzurra came home from school early with a fever one day in 2014. It seemed like a cold. She was given some medicine and felt better. The next day she stayed off school with a temperature.
Antonella took her other daughter to school that morning. In the meantime, Azzurra violently vomited while being looked after by her grandmother. When her mother returned, she said: ‘My head is exploding.’
Azzurra went to her room and collapsed on the bed face-down.
As her mother recalled: ‘When I turned her over, her eyes were rolled back and foam came out of her mouth. I shouted and slapped her to try and wake her up. The ambulance came and took us to hospital. They wheeled her into a room and closed the doors.’
Doctors took spinal fluid from Azzurra and found meningitis. She was put on a life support machine for a day, but was getting worse. The doctors said there was no hope.
Antonella now runs a foundation which enlightens parents sceptical of vaccines. It is called A Kiss for Azzurra.
After her daughter died, 300 children in the family’s area were vaccinated who wouldn’t otherwise have been. ‘I want parents to know how many lives vaccines save,’ she says simply.
In Rome, Federico Galluccio, a 15-year-old student at hotel college, died of meningitis C in January this year. His mum Valeria tells how he woke her up one morning at 5.30am complaining of a fever.
‘By lunchtime he was so ill, it scared us. We didn’t wait for an ambulance but drove him to hospital ourselves.
‘I could only say, “Ciao, Pippi,” my nickname for him, before he was taken off in a wheelchair. The next time I held him in my arms, it was too late.’
Federico’s family are in favour of vaccines, but the meningitis one was forgotten. After his death, all 1,100 of the children at the college asked for, and received, the full range of jabs.
Dr Antonio Miglietta, a public health medic in Federico’s area, said he hoped the teenager’s death marked a turning point.
‘That a child should die of a disease preventable by vaccines cannot be tolerated today. They should not be forced on families, but become a moral obligation for everyone.’ A sentiment Silvia Rossetti would doubtless agree with.