Ohio declares whooping cough outbreak

Ohio health officials have declared a whooping cough outbreak in Franklin county. 410 cases have been reported this year in Columbus and Franklin County and 258 have been laboratory-confirmed. Adults are encouraged to get booster shots, to prevent them from infecting young babies, who are the most vulnerable, as demonstrated by the 8 babies dead of pertussis in the California whooping cough outbreak. Through the end of August the county had seen twice as many cases as all of last year, and there are 4 months to go to the end of 2010. Columbus Public Health and the Franklin County Board of Health will hold special immunization clinics in the next couple of weeks that will offer pertussis booster shots. Here is the info:

Columbus Public Health will have two walk-in immunization clinics for pertussis booster shots and other school required vaccines.

• Sept. 8 from 3 to 6:30 p.m.
• Sept. 15 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Franklin County Board of Health is holding two clinics by appointment for pertussis booster shots and other school required vaccines.

• Sept. 8 from 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
• Sept. 11 from 9 a.m. to noon

American Academy of Pediatrics recommends mandatory flu vaccines for health workers

In its upcoming October 2010 issue, the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending mandatory flu vaccinations for health care workers. Here is the current release from the AAP website:

Health-care associated influenza outbreaks are a common and serious public health problem that contribute significantly to patient morbidity and mortality and create a financial burden on health care systems. In a new policy statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that all health care personnel should be required to receive an annual influenza vaccine. The policy, “Recommendation for Mandatory Influenza Immunization of All Health Care Personnel,” published in the October 2010 print issue of Pediatrics (published online Sept. 13), states that “despite the efforts of many organizations to improve influenza immunization rates with the use of voluntary campaigns, influenza coverage among health care personnel remains unacceptably low.” Annual influenza epidemics account for 610 660 life-years lost, 3.1 million days of hospitalization, and 31.4 million outpatient visits. Flu generates a cost burden of approximately $87 billion per year in the United States. Mandatory influenza immunization for all health care personnel is “ethically justified, necessary and long overdue to ensure patient safety,” according to the statement. The influenza vaccine is safe, effective, and cost-effective, so health care organizations must work to assuage common fears and misconceptions about the influenza virus and the vaccine.

Anti Vaccine Watch

The anti vaccine movement has been gaining a lot of strength over the past decade, not only in the US, but also worldwide. Parents, celebrities and other interested parties have been raising a lot of questions and concerns about, what they perceive to be, vaccine concerns. Many of the concerns they raise have been studied in-depth and we have a pretty solid scientific consensus about them. For example, the claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism has failed to be validated, and in fact study after study shows no causation between the two. The same has been true about concerns about thimerosal (a.k.a. mercury).
However, it is important not to demonize this opposition. I have a firm belief that the vast majority of them have their heart in the right place; I believe they are motivated by pretty much the same values that motivate me; that is the well-being of our children. On the other hand, I also believe that they are very picky with the evidence; that they have very low standards for evidence; that they are inconsistent in their logic and either do not understand, or refuse to acknowledge, their logical fallacies, when they commit them. Some of them seem to be too invested in some conspiracy theory and are ideologically opposed to vaccines to the point that, while demanding evidence for X and Y, they are unwilling to accept any evidence for X and Y that opposes their pre-existing beliefs.
Nevertheless, it is important that we take their arguments seriously and devote some of our limited time to looking into the allegations they make, because it is quite conceivable that at some point they may make a good argument, and we shouldn’t be willing to miss  the chance to look into a real issue. So, here at Vaccine Central, I intend to keep an eye on the anti-vaccine side, and address some of the claims they make, from time to time.
Today, we will look at a website called MothersClick which features an article titled “Flu Vaccine Banned in Australia but safe in the US?????“. You can see right away, from the 5 question marks in the title, that this piece is meant to scare, but let us not reach premature conclusions. Let us look at the actual claims in the article, and see if the evidence supports them.

Although it’s still summer here in the US, it is of course winter in Australia, and the flu season is well under way there. As usual, Australian health authorities have been urging parents there to vaccinate their children against the flu, propagating the mythology that flu vaccines are both safe and effective. But this time around, many Australian parents found out the hard way that they were being lied to.

The first thing to notice is the claim that there is a “myth” that flu vaccines are both safe and effective. That is patently not true, unless one twists “safe and effective” to mean that it is 100% safe and 100% effective, which is absurd and irrational to expect of anything that we use or consume in our daily lives. Nothing that we consume is 100% safe; just a little while ago lettuce was recalled because of E. Coli contamination; more recently a major egg recall has been in effect in the US because of salmonella tainting. Products are being called left and right because we’re finding out that they are not 100% safe. Did you know that hood sweaters are recalled because in some instances, to some people, they can be a choking hazard? Did you know that every year there are about 45,000 deaths, in the US alone, due to car accidents? Does this mean we’re being lied to about: lettuce, eggs, hood sweaters, cars and goodness knows what else? Or is it more reasonable to think that humans, and human produced products, are not perfect, and cannot be expected to be otherwise? Then why would we expect perfection from vaccines? Rationally we shouldn’t.
The fear mongering continues:

Remember: Health authorities in Australia, UK, the United States and everywhere else have relentlessly insisted that flu vaccines are perfectly safe and can’t possibly harm anyone. In the U.S., the FDA has given its approval to the very same flu vaccine that’s harming children in Australia, and the CDC has insisted that all children in the USA — regardless of age — should now be injected with this very same flu vaccine. They did not change the vaccine in any way it is the same exact one!!!

There are two claims to unfold here. The first one is that “the United States and everywhere else have relentlessly insisted that flu vaccines are perfectly safe and can’t possibly harm anyone”. Is that true? Does the US government and doctors tell us that flu vaccines are “perfectly safe and can’t possibly harm anyone”? Let’s check.
The CDC has a whole page about Vaccine Side Effects, where they list in detail all the side effects that have been associated with each vaccine in the US schedule, both Mild and Severe reactions, including the flu vaccine. They also provide detailed fliers for both the LAIV version, and the inactivated version of the flu vaccine. Furthermore, since 1988 the United States has set up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to set aside funds to compensate people who are injured from certain vaccines. Even more, the CDC and the FDA have set up the Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System used to collect information about adverse affects following the vaccination. It is clear that these facts completely contradict the claim that we are being told the flu vaccines are “perfectly safe and can’t possibly harm anyone”. That claim as well is untrue.
The second claim that is being made here is the one expressed in the last sentences, that the same vaccine from Australis is being given to US children. While this is superficially true in the sense that they all are flu vaccines, this is the logical equivalent of saying that eggs being sold in France are the same as the recalled eggs in the US, because they’re both chicken eggs. The fact of the matter is that the CDC recommends that the Australian vaccine, which was associated with highly increased chances of febrile seizures, should not be used in US children.  This applies only to Afluria, a vaccine produced by the same company that produced the Australian one, not to the other brands of flu vaccine which have not been associated with this problem. In fact, if you look at the inactivated flu vaccine flier at the CDC’s website, you will see a prominent disclaimer in the second page, where they suggest now that Afluria shouldn’t be given to any children under the age of 8. Again, to reiterate the point, claiming that you should stay clear of all flu vaccines because the Australian brand seems to be problematic, is akin to saying that someone in France shouldn’t eat eggs because of the egg recall in the US. It appears as though this claim is not true either.
In conclusion, it appears that this piece specifically is making claims that can be shown to be false with a little bit of research. So why did the author make them in the first place? The reasons can be multiple, and I wouldn’t want to speculate. What we need to take away from this short analysis, is that anyone can write anything on the web; that anyone can make any claim they want on the web; that we cannot trust everything we read on the web and the reliability of the source of the information must not be automatically assumed, and that includes me, which is why I try to back up what I say with information from reliable sources. And lastly, just because a conspiracy theory about government cover up sounds possible, it doesn’t make it so, specifically when one considers all the things the government is supposed to be covering up: UFOs, vaccines, nuclear anything, fluoridated water, power lines causing cancer etc etc.

Vaccine Preventable Death – Landon Carter Dube

I must warn readers that the following video is very sad; you won’t be able to watch it to the end with dry eyes.

Age at death - <2 months
Cause of death – Whooping cough (pertussis)
Vaccination Status – Unknown; highly likely he was unvaccinated due to young age (first pertussis dose is administered at 2 months)
What happened – Landon Carter Dube was born on December 8th, 2009. He was three weeks early; weighed in at 6 lbs 6 ounces and was 18 ½ inches long. On January 15th he  went in for his 6 week check up (he was actually 5 weeks and 3 days old).  His parents had some concerns that Carter had been spitting up a little and seemed to be kind of cranky at night. The doctor suggested switching his formula and monitoring his crying in case it was colic. Tuesday, January 19th Carter was not himself, he was cranky and wasn’t happy unless he was being held.  When his mother took his temperature, he was running a low-grade fever (100.1). His parents decided to take him to his pediatrician for a quick visit. I will let his mother tell you what happened next:

We saw a NP that day; she was immediately concerned with Carter’s breathing rate and thought he maybe a little dehydrated. The next thing I knew we were in an ambulance headed to Levine’s Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, NC. We were admitted to the 8th floor, Progressive Care Unit for observation. Doctors came in and asked a lot of questions over and over again, everyone had to wear a mask and a gown because they were unsure what was wrong with Carter. The doctors threw around RSV, pneumonia, upper respiratory infection, and the lastly Purtussis (whooping cough).
Over the next two days, Carter had to be put on nasal oxygen, he was taken for chest x-rays, suctioning out of his nose and lungs, and they even beat his back to loosen up his lungs. Nothing worked and only seemed to make him mad. They even placed an IV in his arm (covering the finger he sucked on) to supplement his lack of mild intake.
Friday, January 22nd Carter started coughing and lost his breath and turned blue. I totally panicked; if my husband would not have been there I don’t know what would have happened. I just froze in my steps.
Saturday, January 23rd Carter was sent to the 6th floor PICU, for better care and observation.
Early Sunday, January 24th the decision was made to put Carter on a respiratory. He had become fussy and inconsolable, which caused him to struggle even more to breath. That was the last time we saw our Carterbug awake, but we didn’t know that at the time.
Around noon on Tuesday, the doctors starting through around the idea of putting Carter on an ECMO (heart and lung bypass machine), but it would be the last resort. The percentage we were given was 60/40 that he would leave the hospital with us. We discussed our options with the doctor and made arrangements for Zach to come and see Carter before the procedure was done. Zach for only being 10 handled it very well and was a real trooper through it all. Carter went into surgery later that evening and we sat around with our wonderful family and friends and waited. It took about 3 hours for the procedure and we were told Carter came through it ok.
I was not prepared for what I saw when I walked back to his room. My sweet baby boy with these huge tubes in the side of his neck and watching his blood go in and out of them. The ECMO machine itself was huge and required two people to run it at all times. Now Carter had four people in his room, two full time nurses and two ECMO techs. Carter had started swelling and wasn’t putting out enough urine for the fluid he was taking in. The doctors told us it was related to the stress on his body for being so sick. Now we had to worry about kidney failure and other issues related to the swelling.
Wednesday January 27th, was a good day. Carter held his own all day and there were no sudden changes. It was the first day we relaxed a little and talked about a long term plan. They didn’t sugar coat it, we were still looking at a month or more in the hospital before we would take him home. When we went to bed Wednesday night it was the first time I didn’t feel like I was carrying the world on my shoulders.
That feeling lasted about seven hours; we got a call from one of the specialists around 7:00. Carter had a rough night and they had to give him fluid boluses to keep his pressure up, we need to come to his room soon.
It was hard to stand back and look at my sweet baby boy all swollen to twice his size. They had him under a heat lamp to keep him warm and two huge medicine trees holding all of the meds that were working to keep him alive. An lets not forget the machine that was monitoring his heart and blood pressure that was constantly alarming us that something wasn’t right. It was like a bad dream and we just couldn’t wake up. We had asked the doctors to always be honest and to let us know when it got to the point that they were doing things too Carter and not for him.
At 5:06, Thursday January 29th, Carter received his angel wings. He went peacefully on his own terms to the arms of Jesus. I truly believe that we will see him one day and that his spirit is with us everyday.

By January 19th, little Carter was simply cranky and restless, 10 days later he was gone. Heartbreaking; absolutely heartbreaking. Please, vaccinate your kids; get your booster shots, ask anyone that will be in constant contact with your newborn to take the booster shot.
Sources
Carter’s Mom telling her story on Facebook
Carter’s Mom sharing this story on Shareyourstory.org

No link between vaccines and autism, appeals court rules

Remember, this is a court of law ruling, which is generally much more lax than the rigors of science.  The anti-vax pro-disease nutters can't even get the courts to side with their lunacy.

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a ruling that vaccines are not to blame for autism.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a decision last year by a special vaccine court, which concluded there's little if any evidence to support claims of a vaccine-autism link.
Scientist years ago reached that conclusion, but more than 5,500 families sought compensation through the government's Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Friday's ruling came in the case of Michelle Cedillo of Yuma, Ariz., who is disabled with autism, inflammatory bowel disease and other disorders that her parents blame on a measles vaccine given at 15 months.
In the 2009 ruling Special Master Denise Vowell wrote that the evidence "is weak, contradictory and unpersuasive. Sadly, the petitioners in this litigation have been the victims of bad science conducted to support litigation rather than to advance medical and scientific understanding" of autism.
In its ruling Friday the appeals panel said "we have carefully reviewed the decision of the special master and we find that it is rationally supported by the evidence, well-articulated, and reasonable. We, therefore, affirm the denial of the Cedillos' petition for compensation."
Earlier this year the so-called vaccine court also concluded that the additive thimerosal is not to blame for autism, an added setback in a long-running battle by parents convinced there is a connection.
The decisions help to offer reassurance to parents scared about vaccinating their babies because of a small but vocal anti-vaccine movement. Some vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles, are on the rise.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Penn & Teller intro to their vaccine episode

Penn & Teller did an excellent job at voicing the anti-anti-vaccine message in the season finale of the 8th season of their Bullsh!t show.  Here is their intro which makes an excellent point visually, that doesn’t come accross as strongly verbally.
Warning: NSFW due to use of profanities.

Vaccine Preventable Death – Collin Springborn

Age at death - 3 months
Cause of death – Whooping cough (pertussis)
Vaccination Status – Unknown. He could have received the 1st of the 5 DTaP doses required for full immunization (first dose is recommended at 2 months)
What happened – Collin contracted the virus a week before he died. During that week, Collin’s mother recalls took him to the hospital several times and doctors were unable to diagnose what was causing the cough. The coughing became progressively worse  to the point where Collin would turn blue and vomit.
Doctors did blood work but were unable to diagnosis the problem as whooping cough. Collin stopped breathing at 6 p.m. on a Friday, hours after returning home from a doctor’s appointment. He was placed in the pediatrics intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit and died two days later.
Collin’s twin brother also got the disease. He was in and out of the hospital during a 4 month period, and luckily survived the disease that took his brother. Our hearts go out to the parents; I am very sorry for the pain you’ve had to endure.
Sources
The Times Herald

Vaccination could have prevented massive egg recall

Okay, not a vaccine for people, but for the hens themselves.  If this can prevent one needless death from a salmonella outbreak, it would be worth it.

U.S. Rejected Hen Vaccine Despite British Success

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Published: August 24, 2010

Faced with a crisis more than a decade ago in which thousands of people were sickened from salmonella in infected eggs, farmers in Britain began vaccinating their hens against the bacteria. That simple but decisive step virtually wiped out the health threat. 
But when American regulators created new egg safety rules that went into effect last month, they declared that there was not enough evidence to conclude that vaccinating hens against salmonella would prevent people from getting sick. The Food and Drug Administration decided not to mandate vaccination of hens — a precaution that would cost less than a penny per a dozen eggs.
Now, consumers have been shaken by one of the largest egg recalls ever, involving nearly 550 million eggs from two Iowa producers, after a nationwide outbreak of thousands of cases of salmonella was traced to eggs contaminated with the bacteria.
The F.D.A. has said that if its egg safety rules had gone into effect earlier, the crisis might have been averted. Those rules include regular testing for contamination, cleanliness standards for henhouses and refrigeration requirements, all of which experts say are necessary.
However, many industry experts say the absence of mandatory vaccination greatly weakens the F.D.A. rules, depriving them of a crucial step that could prevent future outbreaks.
Salmonella bacteria is passed from infected hens to the interior of eggs when they are being formed. The salmonella vaccines work both by reducing the number of hens that get infected and by making it more difficult for salmonella bacteria to pass through to the eggs.
“They are the only thing I’m aware of that really controls the problem from the inside out, at the source,” said Ronald Plylar, the former president of a company that developed an early salmonella vaccine.
Many people in the American egg industry say they believe that the current outbreak and recall will tip the balance and force nearly all producers in the United States to begin vaccinating hens to reassure consumers.
The F.D.A. said it considered mandatory vaccination very seriously. “We didn’t believe that, based on the data we had, there was sufficient scientific evidence for us to require it,” said Dr. Nega Beru, director of the agency’s Office of Food Safety.
However, Dr. Beru says that the new rules encourage producers to vaccinate if they think it will help fight salmonella.
Another F.D.A. food safety official, Nancy S. Bufano, said that despite the success of vaccination in Britain, the agency thought that because the vaccines used in the two countries were not identical, it made comparisons difficult.
Vaccine company executives, however, said the differences were minor and the drugs used in both countries were equally effective.
The drop in salmonella infections in Britain was stunning.
In 1997, there were 14,771 reported cases in England and Wales of the most common type of the bacteria, a strain known as Salmonella Enteritidis PT4. Vaccine trials began that year, and the next year, egg producers began vaccinating in large numbers.
The number of human illnesses has dropped almost every year since then. Last year, according to data from the Health Protection Agency of England and Wales, there were just 581 cases, a drop of 96 percent from 1997.
“We have pretty much eliminated salmonella as a human problem in the U.K.,” said Amanda Cryer, director of the British Egg Information Service, an industry group.
The F.D.A. estimates that each year, 142,000 illnesses in the United States are caused by consuming eggs contaminated with the most common type of salmonella. It has said the new rules would cut that by more than half. People who eat bad eggs that have not been cooked thoroughly to kill the bacteria can get diarrhea and cramps. Rare cases can be fatal.
There are no laws mandating vaccination in Britain. But it is required, along with other safety measures, if farmers want to place an industry-sponsored red lion stamp on their eggs, which shows they have met basic standards. The country’s major supermarkets buy only eggs with the lion seal, so vaccination is practiced by 90 percent of egg producers, according to Ms. Cryer.
Thomas Humphrey, a food safety professor at the University of Liverpool, said that producers in the United Kingdom turned to vaccination after other measures, similar to those now required by the F.D.A., failed to show significant results.
One-half to two-thirds of American farmers already inoculate their flocks, according to industry estimates, and that number is likely to increase. While the new federal rules do not require vaccination, they do require testing for salmonella. If henhouses are found to be contaminated, then eggs must be tested. If eggs are tainted, then they would have to be broken and pasteurized, which would mean producers would get much less money for their eggs.
The F.D.A. has estimated that it would cost farmers about 14 cents a bird to vaccinate, or about $31 million to cover hens at all the large farms in the country. But vaccine company executives said the cost can be just a few cents a bird, depending on the type of vaccine and how many doses are given. A single bird can lay about 270 eggs in its lifetime. 
After the current outbreak, “many producers that were trying to decide whether or not to vaccinate will now vaccinate,” said David Zacek, the chief executive of Lohmann Animal Health International, one of three companies that produce the vaccines in the United States.
The two companies involved in the recall, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, said that they began introducing vaccinated birds to their Iowa operations last year. But the companies have seven separate facilities in Iowa with a total of about 7 million birds, and it can take up to a year and a half to replace all the hens on a large farm.
The companies would not say how many of their birds had been vaccinated when the outbreak started this spring. Wright County said that currently about three-quarters of its birds have been vaccinated and Hillandale said it has now vaccinated about 80 percent.
Industry experts said that in a typical facility, eggs from different laying barns are commingled when they are sorted and packed, so it is possible that eggs from vaccinated and unvaccinated hens can be shipped out together.
“That’s how a farm can be moving in the right direction but still only be partially protected,” said Dr. George Boggan, technical service veterinarian for CEVA, the vaccine company that works with Wright County Egg.
The F.D.A. began working on its new egg rules more than a decade ago, and a review of agency documents suggests that officials formed a negative opinion about the effectiveness of vaccines early on. That opinion failed to change as time passed and evidence mounted that vaccines significantly reduced the occurrence of salmonella.
Many small-scale trials show vaccines are effective. But the F.D.A. said that only large-scale field trials could prove that a vaccine would work in the real world of commercial henhouses.
One such trial cited by F.D.A. officials was a 1999 Pennsylvania study that found little difference in salmonella levels between some vaccinated flocks and an unvaccinated control group. “Currently there is no vaccine that has been shown to be efficacious in the field,” the agency wrote in a public summary of its views last year.
However, Dr. Sherrill Davison, the lead researcher on that 1999 study, said that the F.D.A.’s assessment did not reflect advances made since then.
“That data was very preliminary data that used vaccine technology from the beginning of these programs, and that technology has changed and our understanding of how to administer them has changed,” she said.
Dr. Davison was involved in creating a pioneering egg safety program in Pennsylvania that was the model for the federal rules that went into effect this year. While the Pennsylvania program is voluntary, she said the vast majority of producers there vaccinate their birds.
“I personally believe it is essential for the program,” she said.

Vaccine Preventable Suffering – Jamie Schanbaum

Jamie’s Story
On November 13th 2008, Jamie Schanbaum was rushed to Seton Hospital thinking she was having an asthma attack. Two days later, Jamie and her family learned she had contracted meningococcal septicemia. This disease is similar to meningitis. Instead of infiltrating the brain and spinal cord, the bacteria infects the blood. Meningococcal septicemia has a higher fatality rate than typical meningitis. The state health department informed us that one in ten people is a carrier of this particular bacteria which resides in the nose or throat. You can have it and not be affected by it, but something as simple as a cold or a stomach virus can cause this bacteria to work its way into your blood system, which is what happened to Jamie. Jamie survived, though sadly she lost her legs and fingers. They had to be amputated as a direct result of her infection. Jamie’s plight inspired her to educate the public about Meningitis. Her goal is to prevent others from needlessly suffering from this vaccine preventable disease.
Since leaving the hospital, Jamie has shown tremendous strength and perseverence as she endeavors to promote awareness of this disease and its consequences. In the summer of 2009, Senate Bill 819, a.k.a. The Jamie Schanbaum Act, requiring meningitis vaccinations of college students, passed despite two previously unsuccessful attempts thanks to Jamie and her supporters.
Sources
The J.A.M.I.E Group
For an ABC news report on Jamie’s story, prior to the amputation, click here.

Measles mortality rate drops 90 percent in 10 years in Lebanon

And some people say vaccines are bad?  Really?

BEIRUT: “Amazing progress” has been made in reducing measles mortality rates and increasing vaccination coverage in the country, the United Nations said in an open letter sent to the Ministry of Public Health on Tuesday.
According to the letter from the UN Foundation, addressed to the Health Minister Mohammad Jawad Khalife, Lebanon has seen over a 90 percent reduction in measles deaths since 2000, falling in line with the regional average.
Lebanon is now nearing a 93 percent immunization coverage rate and is on target to reach 95 percent nationally in the near future, ministry officials said. This is up from an estimated 55 percent vaccination rate in 1997. The rise has been driven largely by extensive media campaigns, national school drives and increased partnership between the public and private sector.
The government also now offers free vaccinations to all children, including non-Lebanese nationals, but with the high cost of the vaccine – it retails at around $100 on the open market – the private sector is encouraged to take on a large chunk of the burden especially in better-off areas.
“We’ve seen a huge jump in vaccinating rates the last ten years,” Randa Hamadeh, immunization and essential medications program manager at the Ministry of Public Health said. “We have worked closely with UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to ensure that we only use the highest quality of vaccine and by purchasing through them we are also able to obtain vaccines at the best possible price.
“We have worked with municipalities and the lowest levels of local government to make sure that the message gets through to everyone. Our approach at working on the sub-national level is helping us reach the areas most in need.”
While national coverage may be high, regional inequality remains prevalent and the government, in partnership with various UN agencies and the Lebanese Order of Physicians, is now striving to make sure that even the peripheries obtain at least a 90 percent immunization coverage rate.
“We urge Lebanon to fully recommit to measles elimination by 2010 and to a possible eradication goal by 2020,” the UN letter read.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=117267#ixzz0xZH9E6fS
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)