Mutant Strains Of Polio Vaccine Now Cause More Paralysis Than Wild Polio

“Mutant Strains Of Polio Vaccine Now Cause More Paralysis Than Wild Polio”. Below is an excerpt from the article.

Nurses give the oral polio vaccine to a Syrian child in a refugee camp in Turkey. Carsten Koall/Getty Images hide caption
For the first time, the number of children paralyzed by mutant strains of the polio vaccine are greater than the number of kids paralyzed by polio itself.
So far in 2017, there have been only six cases of "wild" polio reported anywhere in the world. By "wild" public health officials mean the disease caused by polio virus found naturally in the environment.
"It's actually an interesting conundrum. The very tool you are using for [polio] eradication is causing the problem," says Raul Andino, a professor of microbiology at the University of California at San Francisco.
The oral polio vaccine used throughout most of the developing world contains a form of the virus that has been weakened in the laboratory. But it's still a live virus. (This is a different vaccine than the injectable one used in the U.S. and most developed countries. The injectable vaccine is far more expensive and does not contain live forms of the virus.)
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