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Libreville (AFP)
As scientists around the world scramble to find a vaccine to stop the spread of Covid-19, another deadly disease, polio, has become the latest target of online disinformation campaigns.
The World Health Organization (WHO) celebrated the announcement on August 25 that Africa had eradicated wild poliovirus, a milestone in a decades-long fight against the crippling disease.
However, there is still a vaccine-derived version of the disease known as polio, which occurs rarely when the weakened virus in the vaccine mutates.
It particularly affects countries with low immunization rates and poor sanitation, health experts say.
Two days after the WHO announcement, the UN confirmed that more than a dozen cases of vaccine-derived polio had emerged in nine states of Sudan.
The outbreak added further fuel to the already prolific spread of conspiracy theories fueling false claims about vaccination on social media.
– ‘Vaccine funded by Gates’ –
Conspiracy theory groups were quick to report the outbreak in articles denouncing “one of the biggest public health scandals of the decade,” singling out the WHO and Microsoft’s billionaire founder Bill Gates in their attacks.
A misleading article blaming a “Gates-funded vaccine” for “causing” the outbreak has been shared more than 8,000 times on Facebook groups from the United States and Canada to Colombia.
The claims have also been circulating in Europe, with a French version of the article shared by various groups in France and Belgium.
But the article does not mention that the cases involved people who had not been immunized.
Gates, whose eponymous foundation has invested billions of dollars in making vaccines against diseases such as polio, malaria and HIV, is a regular target of fringe groups who accuse him of profiting from vaccination or even using them to harm.
In the spring, Facebook posts shared tens of thousands of times falsely claimed that a polio vaccine tested by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation paralyzed 490,000 children in India.
And last month, a viral YouTube video claimed that the philanthropist wanted to forcibly vaccinate and “depopulate” Africa.
Gates, who has pledged $ 250 million in efforts to combat the Covid-19 crisis, has dismissed the rumors, blaming “a bad combination of pandemic and social media and people looking for a very simple explanation.”
– Lack of immunization –
According to the WHO, 1,271 people worldwide have contracted polio from the vaccine in the last decade.
The disease is usually spread when the weakened vaccine virus is shed by one vaccinated person and then contracted by others through contaminated food or water.
Oliver Rosenbauer, spokesman for the WHO’s polio eradication plan, told AFP Fact Check that while contamination could “passively immunize other children,” it can have devastating consequences in countries with low immunization rates.
“The problem arises when you have a community that is very poorly vaccinated, because this virus can continue to spread, to find susceptible unvaccinated children,” he said.
“Over time, it can grow back into a strong strain, not a weak strain anymore.”
According to the WHO, people are protected against both wild and vaccine-derived polioviruses if a population is “fully immunized.”
The UN health agency has warned of an increase in cases of polio from the vaccine in recent years. More than 360 cases were recorded in 2019, compared to 104 in 2018 and 96 in 2017.
Sixteen countries across the continent are currently experiencing outbreaks, and the new coronavirus forces some vaccination campaigns to halt.
But a new vaccine is being prepared that “cannot genetically mutate,” said Richard Mihigo, area manager of the WHO program for immunization and vaccine development in Africa.
This new oral polio vaccine (nOPV), which is “more genetically stable” and “cannot genetically mutate,” will be released at the end of the month, he said.
burs-cmb / nla / ach / gle
© 2020 AFP
