14 DAY TRIAL // Type 1 polio could be completely eliminated in Nigeria if the new vaccine reaches enough children in time. This new drug is four times more efficient against all types of polio than any other medication out there today. Considering that Nigeria is one of the last four remaining countries in the world that have not wiped out polio, and that more than 82 percent of the children developing this disease can be found here, the New England Journal of Medicine states that delivering the new drug to those infected should be an international priority.
The new vaccine, mOPV1 (monovalent oral poliovirus vaccine), showed incredible results between 2006 and 2007. Once doctors began administering it, the overall number of polio cases in the country dropped by 75 percent. The numbers offer no doubt that the drug works very well. Children inoculated with this vaccine stand a 67 percent chance of never contracting the disease. The former medication used, the standard trivalent vaccine, only offers a 16 percent chance of adverting the illness.
The North Western part of Nigeria is most affected by the virus. Each year, 21 percent of the country's new polio cases are identified here. Out of all the children affected by the disease, 21 percent never even received a single dose of the trivalent vaccine, while more than half didn't receive the full four doses required for the drug to take effect. Without this dosage, the immune system cannot form an efficient barrier against the virus. A very important impediment in eradicating the disease is the fact that exposure to insufficient medication, which does not kill the virus, may force it to mutate into more dangerous, drug-resistant forms, that could be much more difficult to destroy.
"Nigeria and India are responsible for the vast majority of new global polio cases. In Nigeria, we now have an effective vaccine to use and we've seen the start of improvements in vaccine uptake. These last pockets of unvaccinated children now need to be reached to achieve elimination in Nigeria and this in turn will have a dramatic impact on the prospects of worldwide eradication," said Helen Jenkins, of the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling at Imperial College London, one of the corresponding members of the current study.