Shift in vaccine use needed to eradicate polio: WHO experts

A World Health Organization expert panel called for a shift in the kinds of vaccines used to fight polio, insisting full eradication of the crippling disease is within reach. The WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), which advises the UN health agency on immunisation policies, warned that among the biggest obstacles to eradicating polio were the sporadic outbreaks of the disease caused by live polio virus used in some vaccines. “We think it’s realistic that we will get polio eradicated in the next few years,” SAGE chair Jon Abramson told reporters in Geneva. After facing hundreds of thousands of cases of polio as late as the 1980s, there have so far this year been just 51 people infected with the wild form of the crippling disease that affects mainly young children. With no cases of wild polio registered in Africa since August 2014, the wild version of the virus now exists only in...