Officials in Israel’s Health Ministry held a press conference on Sunday, 28 Menachem Av 5773 to officially launch a program to give polio booster vaccinations to 150,000 children living in southern Israel, referring to children born after January 1, 2004.
The decision making process took a few weeks, beginning with the discovery of polio in sewage water in the Beersheva and Sharon areas. This compelled health officials to become more aggressive, leading to testing 1,400 individuals, sending test samples to a laboratory in the United States.
In the press conference health experts announced that at least 1,000 Israelis are carrying polio, resulting in increased fears of the illness beginning to spread chas v’sholom. While the vaccination program begins in the southern district, hundreds of thousands of additional doses have been ordered as it appears the booster program will spread to other areas of the country.
Many are critical of the ministry but officials on Sunday remained tight-lipped, unwilling to respond to reporters seeking to understand why the ministry halted the polio booster vaccination program about a decade ago. Today, the nation faces genuine concerns of a return of a potentially fatal illness that has been eliminated by the vaccine.
The booster campaign that gets underway on Monday, 30 Menachem Av involved the oral OPV booster which is being given to children in southern district Tipat Chalav well baby clinics.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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“Many are critical of the ministry but officials on Sunday remained tight-lipped, unwilling to respond to reporters seeking to understand why the ministry halted the polio booster vaccination program about a decade ago.”
Perhaps the reason for stopping was the discovery that the live polio vaccine was itself the source of new cases of polio, as revealed by Dr. Joas Salk, the discoverer of the “Salk” vaccine.