South Sudan: 15 children die from contaminated measles vaccine

[Tanuki]

This is heartbreaking.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/africa/south-sudan-15-children-die-in-botched-vaccine-campaign/2017/06/02/232a49e4-476d-11e7-8de1-cec59a9bf4b1_story.html
"Fifteen young children have died in a botched measles vaccination campaign that saw people as young as 12 years old administering the vaccines, South Sudan’s government announced Friday.

The United Nations said the children died of “severe sepsis/toxicity” from the contaminated vaccine, and the health ministry blamed the deaths on human error. One syringe was used for all the children during the four-day campaign, and the vaccine was stored without refrigeration the entire time.

Measles is yet another challenge facing the desperately poor East African country that already has been devastated by more than three years of civil war and a recently declared famine, as well as a cholera outbreak."

[MineralMan]

1. Count down until the anti-vaxxers start misusing this:

10,9,8...

[obamanut2012]

2. yup

[Tanuki]

3. There is also a history of suspicion in some developing countries

(Pakistan, for example, regarding the polio vaccination program), and incidents like the one in South Sudan will only reinforce their resistance.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/16/suspicion-slows-dangerous-work-to-eradicate-polio-in-pakistan
...."Tousif knows when she has lost, and moves swiftly on to the next house. But the unvaccinated child or children left behind are not the only ones at risk in a complicated and patchy effort to control the number of wild poliovirus cases found in Pakistan, which shot up from 58 in 2012 to 306 last year.

Since the Taliban issued a ban on vaccinations, and compared female health workers to prostitutes for working outside the home, more than 80 vaccinators and the armed guards assigned to protect them have been gunned down.
.......
The Pakistani branch of the Taliban, the TTP, has seized on evidence that the vaccination campaign was used as cover by the CIA to gather intelligence. The US government said last year that the practice had stopped and the CIA director had instructed the agency “to make no operational use of vaccination programmes, which include vaccination workers”.

But rumours spread fast in Pakistan and prove near-impossible to debunk once they have taken hold. Communities such as the Pushtuns now associate polio vaccinators with CIA spies and US drones.".....