<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/container-village-poliopolis-belgium-polio-vaccine-trial/>
"In mid-2017, two groups of 15 strangers lived together for 28 days each in a
ring of shipping containers assembled in the parking lot of Antwerp University
Hospital in Belgium. They had access to books and movies, a small courtyard for
barbecues, a common kitchen and dining room, and a fitness room — all of it
behind secure interlocking doors and under the watch of personnel in protective
gowns.
What sounds like a reality TV or sci-fi scenario was, in fact, a remarkable
clinical trial of the latest weapon in the battle to eradicate polio — a
reengineered vaccine called the novel oral polio vaccine type 2, or nOPV2. The
study aimed to evaluate whether the altered formula, the first major update to
polio vaccines in about six decades, could help end outbreaks of circulating
vaccine-derived poliovirus, also known as variant poliovirus. Such cases arise
in rare instances when the live but weakened virus contained in oral polio
vaccines circulates in areas of low vaccine coverage and mutates back into a
dangerous form that can infect people who have not been fully vaccinated.
These variant poliovirus outbreaks have emerged over the past two decades as a
significant stumbling block in the effort by Rotary International and its
partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) to wipe out the
disease. The outbreaks are different from those driven by wild poliovirus,
which circulated naturally in the environment for millennia and remains endemic
in just two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the outcome is the same —
the virus in either kind of outbreak can, in rare instances, cause paralysis."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
