A 4-month-old infant in Noida, Uttar Pradesh has died after allegedly being given polio drops twice.
According to a report in The Times of India, 16 hours after the shots, the girl got ill and turned blue. “Soon after, we took the child to the hospital and she died later in the morning,” Naira’s uncle Amit told TOI.
While the family filed a written complaint with the police in Sector 20 alleging negligence by the doctor, but since they refused to opt for a post-mortem of the child no FIR was registered.
Post this unfortunate incident, FIT reached out to doctors to find out if it was possible that polio drops can cause death?
Dr Krishan Chugh, Director and Head of Department, Paediatrics at Fortis Memorial Research Institute says that death via polio injections are “very, very unlikely.”
As details of the case are still developing, it is impossible to say what the cause of death is without further information verified by medical professionals.
But Dr Chugh does add that, “Any medicine, vaccine or not, can result in an allergic reaction but this usually occurs in minutes. This can happen in any number of doses and in any medicine and is called an anaphylactic reaction.”
Anaphylactic reactions occur in minutes when the body is exposed to any allergen.
The fact that the baby died post 16 hours indicates that there may be no link with the vaccine being administered.
So far, the assumption has been that the polio vaccine was in perfect condition - if the vaccine was tampered with in any way, or was administered in unhygenic conditions, the ensuing death could not be blamed on the vaccine.
Besides, a more thorough investigation is required into the child’s health to determine the cause.
In this case, “It is best to wait for more details before assuming a link between the vaccine and the death,” advises Dr Chugh.
WHO Refutes Polio Vaccine Myths
Since the advent of the anti-vaxx movement and misinformation about vaccination, the WHO has put up an advisory of several common questions asked about polio, the vaccine and immunization in general.
To answer a question about overdose, WHO wrote,
OPV is the WHO-recommended vaccine to eliminate polio worldwide.
Like Dr Chugh, WHO also says, “There is minimal risk of adverse effects from OPV.”
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