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NAS awards Science Journalist

The Nigerian Academy of Science endows a yearly award to promote excellence in science reporting. This year, Miss Oluwatoyosi Ogunseye of Punch Newspaper emerged winner of the 2012 NAS Science Media Award. She was awarded the Print Science-Journalist of the year 2012. Her entry titled “The rich also cry: A tale of deaths and diseases in a heavily polluted upscale; The rich also cry: Killer metals in the blood; The rich also cry: When investment is a curse” was adjudged the best
of all entries that was received. In her response to the award, Miss Ogunseye thanked the Academy for counting her worthy of the prize, and said she is encouraged to do better in science journalism.

Report of the N-AHJA-NAS Vaccine Round Table held on April 22, 2013

Vaccine Round Table

On Monday April 22, 2013, the Nigerian chapter of the African Health Journalist Association (N-AHJA) together with the Nigerian Academy of Science (NAS) held a one day Vaccine Round Table discussion as one of the enlightenment activities for the World Immunization Week, (April 20-25 2013). The even took place at the NAS headquarter

According to the WHO, the World Immunization Week aims to promote one of the world’s most powerful tools for health – the use of vaccines to protect, or “immunize”, people of all ages against disease. The goals of the week are more awareness, access, and coverage. Specifically, during the week, WHO and partners will work to:

• convince people that immunization saves lives;

• mobilize action to increase vaccination coverage with existing and newly available vaccines in underserved and marginalized communities; and

• reinforce political support for global immunization goals.

At the end of the week, it is expected that more people and communities are protected from vaccine-preventable diseases.

The N-AHJA-NAS discussion took the participants through the nature, the production, the use, the delivery, and the effect of vaccines. The discussion also examined the issues of routine immunization and polio eradication in Nigeria. The politics, economic, and social aspects (including vaccine acceptance and rejection) in Nigeria form the concluding parts of the roundtable

A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. It contains killed or weakened form of the disease-causing microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins. A vaccine stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign and destroy it. Later in life, when the body is exposed to the microbe against which the vaccine was developed, the immune “remembers” the initial encounter and is able to more rapidly and easily recognize and destroy the microbe.

Killed vaccines are previously virulent, micro-organisms destroyed with chemicals, heat, radioactivity or antibiotics. Examples are the influenza vaccine, cholera vaccine, polio vaccine and rabies. Another type of killed vaccines is the toxoids, such as tetanus and diphtheria, made from inactivated toxic compounds- products of microbes that cause the disease.

An attenuated vaccine is a live microorganism cultivated under conditions that disable their virulent properties; examples are yellow fever, measles, rubella, and mumps. They typically provoke a more durable immunological response. However, unlike killed vaccines, they still have the capacity of transient growth and with reversion to the virulent form and cause the disease.

A monovalent vaccine, such as yellow fever vaccine contains a single antigen or a single microbe, whereas, polio vaccine, is a multivalent vaccine, because it contains antigens for the three types of poliovirus (polio1, polio2 and polio 3) each of which can cause the disease. In the case of polio disease, as each type is eliminated as a disease agent, mono- or bi-valent vaccines is produced to deal with circulating type still causing disease.

Vaccine preparations, in addition to the active vaccine, also have additional components, such as aluminum salts or gels to serve as adjuvants; antibiotics to prevent the growth of bacteria; egg protein in vaccines prepared using chicken eggs; formaldehyde to inactivate bacterial products for toxoid vaccines; monosodium glutamate as stabilizers and thimerosal as a preservative to prevent contamination and growth of potentially harmful bacteria.

Vaccines are often used prophylactically to prevent or reduce the effects of a future encounter with then natural or wild microbe, such as measles, or therapeutically following an exposure to rabies virus.

It is important to note that vaccines do not always guarantee complete protection from a disease because the host's immune system may not respond adequately or at all to the vaccination, due to lowered immunity in general arising from certain disease condition such as diabetes and AIDS, or from steroid use or age). In an individual with an immune system which does not have a B cell, cannot generate humoral antibodies to a vaccine. Therefore the efficacy of a vaccine will depend on the disease, the strain of the vaccine, completion of a vaccination schedule or such other factors as age or genetic disposition. Because children have underdeveloped immune system o have competing maternal antibodies, they usually get more than one dose of childhood vaccines, such as Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus (DPT), and polio

Vaccination policy varies from country to country, depending on existence of diseases of public health significance. In Nigeria, the following vaccines are administered in the national routine immunization programme – BCG, DPT (diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus), Hib - Haemophilus influenzae type b, Hepatitis B, polio, measles, yellow fever, meningococcal vaccine, Human papilloma vaccine (HPV). There are plans to introduce more vaccines in the future, such as rotavirus vaccine,

Nigeria has had a dismal track record of immunization coverage. During the 20 year period between n 1980 and 2000, estimated national coverage for any antigen was on the average below 60%. The situation only improved marginally between 2001 and 2010, during which immunization coverage hitch-hiked above 60% but below 80%. According to UNICEF estimates for 2011, our coverage was BCG-64%, DPT3-47%, Hepatitis B3 -50%, Measles -71% and yellow fever- 72%.

Several factors are responsible for this consistently poor performance. These include a national lip-service commitment to issues of health, a penchant for mediocre performance in health care delivery, and a near absence of accountability in national programming. Our inability to stop the transmission of polio is a result of failure to reach all the vulnerable children susceptible to the disease, in a combined atmosphere of insecurity in certain parts of the country and escalation of anti-polio lobby.

What must Nigeria do to eradicate polio, attain and sustain a high level of routine immunization coverage? We must put in place high quality healthcare delivery at all levels of governance, we must embrace accountability in the performance of our duties. Specifically on eradicating polio from our country, we must recognize that EVERY Nigerian has a role to play, including and especially the anti-polio lobby. Therefore we must not exclude anyone or group in the national effort to eradicate polio.

We must also engage the private sector in sourcing more resources in support of health and health care delivery. Success and sustenance of the gains of the World Immunization week depends on Nigerians – government and citizens appreciating the importance of health as a plank for national social wellbeing and economic development. Transforming and re-orienting our national attitude for positive change is the first and most important pillar in any transformation agenda.