Article Text
Abstract
The obligations of organisations associated with policy formation and implementation of international mass public health programmes are explored. Lines of responsibility are considered to become unclear because of the large number of agencies associated with such programmes. A separation of the relevant obligations among the bodies responsible for the formulation (usually an international non-governmental organisation) and those responsible for the implementation of the policies (usually national bodies) is suggested. The continuing oral polio vaccine campaign against poliomyelitis in India is used to illustrate the general argument. Although the aim of the programme is legitimate and laudable, unnecessary harm is currently being caused to some children as a result of elements of the policy and this should be rectified immediately. Such mass programmes should take care to ensure that people are not unnecessarily sacrificed in the drive to attain the desirable ends of the policy.
- IAP, Indian Academy of Pediatrics
- IPV, inactivated polio vaccine
- NGO, non-governmental organisation
- OPV, oral polio vaccine
- VAPP, vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis
- WHO, World Health Organization
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
-
Competing interests: None.
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.
Copyright information:
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis of fractional dose compared with standard dose inactivated polio vaccination in children
- The polio endgame: rationale behind the change in immunisation
- Intestinal antibody responses to a live oral poliovirus vaccine challenge among adults previously immunized with inactivated polio vaccine in Sweden
- Polio: from eradication to systematic, sustained control
- Impact of maternal antibodies and infant gut microbiota on the immunogenicity of rotavirus vaccines in African, Indian and European infants: protocol for a prospective cohort study
- Does oral polio vaccine have non-specific effects on all-cause mortality? Natural experiments within a randomised controlled trial of early measles vaccine
- Non-specific effects of vaccines: plausible and potentially important, but implications uncertain
- Pakistan remains polio free—despite covid-19, the Afghan conflict, and a waning global eradication effort
- Annual cost savings of US$70 million with similar outcomes: vaccine procurement experience from Iraq
- WHO declares polio a public health emergency