Israel took its polio vaccination campaign nationwide yesterday, saying a two-week vaccination effort in the south was not enough to curb the threat of an outbreak of the virus.
\n\u201cBeginning today, children born after 1.1.2004 will be vaccinated with two drops of a weakened live (attenuated) polio strain, throughout the country,\u201d the health ministry said in a statement.
\n\u201cThe decision to vaccinate nationwide is due to the ongoing presence of the polio virus in the Israeli sewage system, and it reaching children.\u201d
\nThe ministry said that since the launch of the campaign in the south of the country two weeks ago, 60,000 children \u2014 or 60 percent of the children in that region \u2014 had already been vaccinated.<\/p>\n
Speaking on military radio, Health Minister Yael German said that while 98 percent of children in Israel had already been vaccinated as infants, \u201cthat does not prevent children vaccinated with a dead (inactivated) virus from being carriers and passing the disease on.\u201d
\nGerman chided parents who questioned the need to vaccinate their children with an attenuated virus in order to prevent the potential spread of the virus to others, calling the vaccination \u201ca matter of mutual guarantee.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis attitude is not socially acceptable,\u201d she told military radio. \u201cWe have an enemy in Israel, there is a virus and we must take it out.\u201d
\nMeanwhile, the Izun Hozer group which according to its Facebook page promotes medical knowledge filed a petition to the High Court asking for a freeze on the campaign until questions are answered on the specific vaccine being used.<\/p>\n
Dikla Baranes, a lawyer representing the group, said the vaccine in use was \u201cnot tested in any Western country,\u201d only on a small group in India, and the results were \u201cvery significant\u201d and raised serious question marks.<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israel took its polio vaccination campaign nationwide yesterday, saying a two-week vaccination effort in the south was not enough to curb the threat of an outbreak of the virus.
\n\u201cBeginning today, children born after 1.1.2004 will be vaccinated with two drops of a weakened live (attenuated) polio strain, throughout the country,\u201d the health ministry said in a statement.
\n\u201cThe decision to vaccinate nationwide is due to the ongoing presence of the polio virus in the Israeli sewage system, and it reaching children.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}