Ukraine - Unscheduled vaccination: GENIE SET FREE

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Unscheduled vaccination: GENIE SET FREE

Author: Olha SKRYPNYK

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Anton T., a teenager from the town of Kramatorsk,

died several weeks before finishing school. How

can his parents ever be consoled? Will the

traditional

“God-takes-the-best-to-the-heaven-earliest” help?

Will it help if they hear the officials from the

Ministry of Health explain that the unscheduled

vaccination against measles and rubella in

Ukraine was meant to protect Europe from the

measles epidemic, as somebody somewhere at the

top decided to eradicate this disease by 2010?!

Compulsory, but not forced, vaccination

The tragic accident in Kramatorsk scared the

young people who agreed to get inoculated, their

parents and rank-and-file medics involved in this

dubious project of saving Europe from viruses. It

was intensely covered by the media and caught the

attention of the President, who summoned the

Minister of Health to order a thorough inquiry into the case.

While people in Donetsk Oblast are mourning and

worrying, senior officials of the

sanitary-and-epidemiologic service at the

Ukrainian Ministry of Health, WHO and UNICEF

representatives have called numerous press

briefings to reassure the public that everything

is going as planned and the only reason 14

schoolchildren were hospitalized in Donetsk

Oblast is that doctors there are overcautious.

Some time later the number grew to 68 boys and

girls who felt sick after inoculation. In the

evening, Minister V.Kniazevych announced at last

that the unscheduled vaccination was suspended.

Too late, alas! Experts believe the latest events

will undermine the minister’s plans to reorganize

the public health system. Time and trust have

been lost, together with the chances of gaining

support. ly speaking, top officials of the

ministry of Health had every opportunity to come

off clear, since the decision to have mass

vaccination had been made long before

V.Kniazevych was appointed minister. According to

the original plan, the campaign was to be

launched in November 2007, but something did not

work then and the launch was postponed for six

months. In the meantime, medical researchers and

NGOs managed to raise public awareness of the

problem, pointing to bottlenecks in the campaign.

However, their disturbing conclusions did not

seem to interest anyone in the ministry. On

February 23, 2008, in his exclusive interview to

ZN, Minister Kniazevych said he “revoked the

decision on the compulsory character of

vaccination. And it is critical that the vaccine

be officially registered in Ukraine.”

Nevertheless, three days later – on February 27 –

the Cabinet of Ministers signed a relevant

resolution, which the sanitary-and-epidemiologic

service rushed to implement. The service had

always been the greatest enthusiast of and

lobbyist for the campaign of mass vaccination

against measles and rubella with the Indian-made vaccine.

According to competent sources in the Ministry of

Health, the concerned international organizations

insisted on the maximum possible number of

vaccinations: they knew in advance how many young

people aged 15 to 29 live in a certain city, town

or district. Ukrainian public servants, who are

duty-bound to expedite national interests,

agreed, yielding to their argumentation or,

rather, surrendering us and our children. There

is enough evidence of the above. You may ask:

“Enough for what or whom?” It is enough for us,

Ukrainians who realize that rhetoric about

protecting the population from epidemic,

inflation or independent school tests always

disguises somebody’s personal motives.

Unfortunately, this evidence is not enough for

the competent authorities obligated by law to

guarantee national security and promote

Ukrainians’ rights. State officials must be of

the opinion that 9 million doses of live (sic!)

vaccine against measles and rubella pose neither

actual nor potential threat to 46 million people

in Ukraine. Even if the mass vaccination is

called off after all, where and how can this

viral invasion be neutralized? Will the country

of origin take the vaccine back? Will WHO and

UNICEF, which brought this Trojan horse to Ukraine, help us get rid of it?

Under the current political circumstances, not

only do outsiders foist the behavioural rules and

patterns of the third world countries on our

children, but they also try to affect their

health. According to researchers, the vaccine,

which is cultivated from the cells of a hostile –

Asian – genotype, is harmful to Europeans. But

for the Kramatorsk teenager’s tragic death,

high-ranking officials would have never paid

attention to what is going on in the country.

Today, at last, various public agencies have

started looking into the matter: commissions are

being set, dozens of meetings are being held to

find the way out. Yet so far they have failed to

give a clear answer as to how such a huge batch

of vaccine got to Ukraine. Mind you, these are

not medicines but potentially hazardous

immunobiological preparations that should be

toughly controlled by specialized services.

Was mass vaccination justified?

It is important to find out who initiated the

mass vaccination. Officials in the Ministry of

Health avoid answering this question referring to

the WHO and Ukraine’s mutual understanding in

this regard. At one of the briefings when the

pause following the question grew embarrassingly

long, N.Prodanchuk, First Deputy Minister of

Health, admitted: “Ukraine asked for help.”

He told the truth. The ministry archives should

be still keeping the UNICEF representative’s

letters of appreciation, addressed to S.Berezhnov

and reading that the Ukrainian Party thankfully

accepted all recommendations of that

international organization; so, pursuant to the

previous agreement, mass vaccination was to be launched on November 19, 2007.”

We do not know if N.Prodanchuk received a similar

letter of appreciation – he is a new man in the

ministry – but his deputy L. Mukharska has been

in office for quite a while; thus, she has the

whole picture of the mass vaccination. Since last

summer, L.Mukharska has been persuading decision

makers and the general public, on numerous

occasions, that in 2006 Ukraine went through a

major measles epidemic resulting in 45 thousand

cases of disease and 5 deaths. The only way out

is mass vaccination against measles. You may ask:

“What does anti-rubella vaccine have to do with

it?” According to L.Mukharska, it is difficult to

organize two campaigns and much more convenient

to inoculate people only once with a two-component vaccine.

Infectiologists, including Academician Zhanna

Vozianova, believe in an alternative approach.

First, male teenagers should be vaccinated

against epidemic parotiditis, which outbreaks now

and then in the armed forces and can be

complicated with infertility. Second, national

monitoring data show that “almost 85% of the

Ukrainian population, both urban and rural, is

seropositive to measles. Only 15% needs vaccine

correction.” That means that the overwhelming

majority of people have developed immunity as the

result of either planned vaccination in their

childhood or previous infection with measles. Put

differently, there is no need for mass vaccination.

The data on the number of infected and diseased

during the measles epidemic of 2006 cited by the

sanitary-and-epidemiologic service can be

challenged. Official messages the Ministry of

Health sent out at that time are different: “The

press service of the Ministry of Health hereby

officially notifies that no measles epidemic is

observed in Ukraine, particularly in Kyiv.

According to the WHO criteria, an epidemic is a

situation whereby the prevalence level of a

certain infection exceeds 1% of the total population in a given region.”

Who counted dozens of thousands of infected

people so accurately? Why do different sources

quote a different mortality figure – from four to

six persons? It was a hard task for ministry

officials to make a U-turn from denying the

measles outbreak point blank to admitting the

epidemic. Hence the numbers: 45 thousand is very

close to the WHO standards (1% of the population

is 46 thousand) and, at the same time, it allows the ministry to save face.

Top managers of the sanitary-and-epidemiologic

service love to demonstrate multicoloured graphs,

charts and diagrams so as to make Ukrainians

ashamed, if not frightened: it is from the

capital city of Kyiv that the ominous arrows of

the measles epidemic reached out to Europe, Asia and far-away America.

According to N.Prodanchuk, “we are not 95%

protected today, thus the population cannot be

considered safe, according to epidemiologic

indicators. Our situation is not unique: the

circumstances in Japan are even worse. The

conclusion is obvious – vaccination is necessary

not only from the standpoint of an individual but

also for the sake of protecting the entire population of Ukraine, of Europe.”

Why did the Ukrainian sanitary-and-epidemiologic

service decide that Ukraine was the only country

in Europe that failed to overcome the measles

epidemic? Zhanna Vozianova, an unimpeachable

authority in infectiology, maintains “it is

impossible to totally eradicate measles, at least

now. When the discussion about eliminating

poliomyelitis and other infectious diseases was

underway, measles was also included in the list.

Yet some time later, experts realized it was

premature. The best they could do at that

juncture was to control measles. Ukraine

introduced planned vaccination against measles

but its effectiveness was never analyzed. We know

nothing about the level of immunity developed

after each inoculation. We should start with this.”

Europe has measles, Ukraine has mass vaccination

Consistent with Zhanna Vozianova’s opinion are

the WHO data on the measles outbreaks in Romania,

Italy, the UK, Germany and other European

countries. Careful analysis of Ukrainian

statistics reveals high measles prevalence in the

capital city and border oblasts of Ukraine: Sumy,

Kharkiv and Trans-Carpathian. So it is an even

chance that measles was brought to Ukraine,

rather than exported from it. For instance, in

Denmark and Switzerland the virus of B3 genotype

was registered, in Romania it was D4, while in

Ukraine and Spain it was D6. Probably, ministry

officials did not notice the difference. In the

course of discussion between high-ranking

representatives of the sanitary-and-epidemiologic

service and academics, a professor of immunology

asked what genotype of measles virus was used in

the Indian vaccine. The deputy chief sanitary

doctor of Ukraine looked at the director of the

Centre for Immunobiological Preparations, and the

two of them smiled: “Measles is not the flu, it

has only one virus!” No wonder such “competent”

officials easily approved the procurement of the

two-component MR vaccine whereas the immunologists consider it a big mistake.

“Unnecessary immunization leads to higher allergy

rates,” argues Professor Kateryna Harkava. “It is

wrong to think that allergies have only external

manifestations, like rash or reddening. One

should bear in mind anaphylactic shock that can

be lethal. Before launching mass vaccination of

the adult population, medical scholars and

practitioners should study the vaccination

calendar carefully. In the first year of life a

child gets 17 vaccines! The next six months are

also stressful – another four compulsory

vaccines. Can such a severe attack on the human

immune system ensure its effective functioning?

“Since the vaccine is of Indian make, we are

dealing with the Asian, rather than the European,

population. It means the presence of antigens

unknown to us Ukrainians. It can lead to such

allergic reactions and conditions that we can

hardly imagine. We know that 85% of young people

have antibodies to the measles virus, and 89% of

women of reproductive age have antibodies to the

rubella virus. What was the rationale for the

decision to mass vaccine young people?”

Many would like to learn about it. Most experts

are doubtful about the Indian vaccine’s quality,

especially in view of the manufacturer’s

information on serious complications. The

manufacturer lists more complications than the

officials of the Ministry of Health would declare

during the public education campaigns. The

sanitary-and-epidemiologic service would mention

rising body temperature and edema at the place of

injunction, whereas the manufacturer also refers

to thrombocytopenia (one case per 30 thousand

inoculations), encephalitis and anaphylactic

shock (one case per million inoculations). Our

health authorities must think the manufacturer

calumniates itself as, according to H.Moiseyeva,

Director of the Centre for Immunobiological

Preparations, they had no complaints about the

Indian vaccine: “Forty million doses of this

vaccine were used in the world for mass

immunization. We have the data on post-vaccine

reactions from all over the world, as well as the

results of mass vaccination in Iran, where even

pregnant women were subject to it. We analyzed

the WHO data in the Indian vaccine dossier: not a

single case of complications has ever been registered as yet.”

In fact, the Indian vaccine was used in a limited

number of countries: Albania, Romania,

Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and

Iran. Russia uses an anti-measles vaccine of its

own make, declining humanitarian aid of this

kind. In the UK and Switzerland, measles

outbreaks have not subsided since 2006, but their

governments are in no hurry to mass immunize with

the Indian vaccine. Notably, WHO does not insist

on it. Health authorities in Austria, Germany and

Norway decided to control the vaccination process

in schools with a mandatory check of each (sic!)

child’s immunity status. In Ukraine the

vaccination is compulsory for every person in the

age bracket of 15 to 29 years, including those

who have had measles, although every medical

student will know that in this case people

develop life-long immunity. The vaccine, on the

other hand, produces immunity for no longer than

several years, in the best case scenario; in the

worst case, it fails to do so. That is exactly

what happened with a lot of boys and girls in

2006. According to the sanitary-and-epidemiologic

service reports, the planned vaccinations were

successful. Today, however, L.Mukharska clarifies

that “we used low-immunogenic vaccines then; they

came to Ukraine as part of humanitarian aid and

were not subject to state registration.” Who can

guarantee that the quality of this vaccine, also

supplied within the humanitarian aid programmes, is better?

A false start or a tactical move?

One of the most worrying things is that the

anti-rubella vaccine is particularly hazardous

for pregnant women: European manufacturers warn

against conception within at least three months

after inoculation. For some reason, the

instruction to the Indian vaccine shortens this

time period to two months, and some of the

Ukrainian translations reduce it even more – to

28 days. Similar inconsistency is observed when

it comes to potential complications related to

arthritis and arthralgia: some papers cite the

statistics of 20%, others just mention “sporadic cases.”

In March, during consultations with the academic

community, the chief sanitary doctor of Ukraine

promised in public: “I will not allow the import

of preparations with potential complications in

20% of arthritis! My first instruction is to get

the vaccine registered in the order established

for all other immunobiological preparations.

There are several manufacturers of this vaccine –

they should also be registered in Ukraine, and

those people who do not want to be inoculated

with the Indian vaccine offered by WHO will have

a choice. The consequences and complications of

vaccination are not so serious as often said.

Even sushi can cause anaphylactic shock but no

one will think of threatening you with it. The

government decided that the campaign will take

the entire year. We had difficult negotiations

with WHO and UNICEF. They could not understand

why there were no problems with vaccination in

Moldova, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. I told them

the Ukrainian society is demonstrating a high

level of freedom. We cannot resort to the

totalitarian methods of the past – 30 years ago

we would have done it in a month.”

It is unclear how the currently used methods

differ from the totalitarian ones. Official

launch was scheduled for May 26, 2008 but as

early as on May 5 the mass vaccination started in

Donetsk Oblast. Luhansk and Poltave oblasts

followed suit. Representatives of the

sanitary-and-epidemiologic service in

Ivano-ivsk Oblast claimed on a national TV

channel that not a single school leaver would get

a health certificate (required for applying to

college or university) without undergoing

vaccination. The Crimean

sanitary-and-epidemiologic authorities assured

the public that the vaccine they were using was of Italian make.

Kharkiv medics refused to launch the vaccination

prior to the officially set date. Now Donetsk

health authorities will have to explain why they

injected children with the unregistered vaccine

three weeks before the approved date. The

prosecutor’s office will not take oral instructions for a valid reason.

Post-vaccination silence

It seems that the campaign organizers were

interested in the early launch: the timing was

most opportune due to long holidays. Had it not

been for the tragic case in Kramatorsk, nobody would have noticed it.

“Nobody” here refers to the state officials in

charge of public health, security and human

rights, as well as political leaders totally

ignorant of the experiment that began in Ukraine.

The Supreme Rada kept silent, in particular its

committees specializing in public health, family

and legal matters. The “shadow” government kept

silent. So did the politicians who demanded, a

couple of weeks earlier, that the independent

examinations for school leavers be abolished,

qualifying them as an experiment with children:

what if a child feels unwell on the examination

day but is made to write it all the same? The boy

from Kramatorsk survived the exam; he would have

entered a technical university in the autumn.

What he did not survive was vaccination. Why do

the politicians who claim they stand for the

“small” Ukrainians’ interests say nothing now?

How could the inoculated schoolchildren perform

successfully at the exam if some of them had a

fever of up to 39°? Kramatorsk mourned and buried

17-year-old Anton, but the authorities never

responded to its grief. Ten days later, the NSCD

Secretary made a passionate speech laying the

blame on the incumbent government. She, of all

people, should know how long it takes to prepare

and adopt documents in the Cabinet of Ministers –

she used to be the Minister of Health about a

decade ago. Today it is no secret that the

decision to mass vaccinate was made by the

previous government on the initiative of the then

minister of health and chief sanitary doctor.

The discussion to mass vaccinate has been

underway for almost a year. Everyone seems to

have learnt by now that the two-component MR

vaccine is not used for planned immunization

anywhere in the world. Only third world countries

use it for unscheduled/emergency vaccination

within a humanitarian aid framework. Is it

credible that proper monitoring covers all

inoculated persons in remote areas? Should one

trust the data provided by health authorities of

countries whose medicine is in an even poorer state than ours?

Why don’t the law enforcement bodies investigate

the violation of Ukrainian legislation by the

Ministry of Health? First, the vaccination

calendar provides for two planned anti-measles

inoculations in early childhood, while the

unscheduled vaccination of adults is not

envisioned by national laws and regulations.

Second, only officially registered vaccines can

be used for immunization. Third, illegal

medico-biological and other experiments with

people are penalized with fines, imprisonment and

disqualification. Those interested in details

will find them in the Law of Ukraine “On

Protection of the Population from Infectious

Diseases” (2000) and Article 142 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

So who will be held accountable for the premature

start of the vaccination campaign, for the

hospitalization of a hundred children and the

teenage boy’s death? Answering this question at

the press briefing, N.Prodanchuk said: “The

government, of course!” The journalists had to

ask for clarification: “Which one – Tymoshenko’s

or Yanukovych’s?” The First Deputy Minister

replied: “Tymoshenko’s because the decision was

signed in February. First of all, the Minister of

Health should be brought to account.”

N.Prodanchuk emphasized several times that he had

held his position for only four months as if

forgetting that Minister V.Kniazevych was also

appointed four months ago. It was not him but his

predecessor, ex-Minister V.Haydayev and former

Deputy Minister S.Barazhnov whom WHO addressed

and convinced to carry out the unscheduled

vaccination. Researchers from the Academy of

Medical Sciences of Ukraine also wrote to them

cautioning against hasty imprudent steps but

their arguments proved less convincing.

As a result, the Indian manufacturer got an

extremely profitable order. Some people would

argue, though, that the order was for eight,

rather than nine, million doses and that UNICEF

paid for everything: USD 5 million for the

vaccine and USD 300 thousand for the public education campaign.

The most important thing is that none of the

healthcare officials can answer the question: was

the Indian vaccine registered in Ukraine or not?

N. Prodanchuk said that the vaccine was

registered on April 18th. However, the State Drug

Service is insisting that the Indian vaccine was

not registered in Ukraine. Who should we believe?

According to the official statements of the

sanitary-and-epidemiologic service made in

February, March and April, we can conclude that

the Indian vaccine wasn’t registered and won’t

be. “Our legislation stipulates a possibility of

using unregistered drugs under certain

conditions,” said L. Mukhtarskaya. “It was

planned that the vaccine would be imported

according to a so-called one-time permission.”

In Europe, health services do not trust the words

of producers of drugs and conduct their own

clinical trials with the help of volunteers. This

takes time and costs a lot, but helps to select

the best drugs to avoid tragedies. N. Prodanchuk

also promised to conduct such research, but now,

officials insist that certification of WHO is enough for Ukraine.

“Why not?” says Vyacheslav Kostyliov, the

president of public organization Civil Rights

Protection League. “It is not a secret that WHO

carries out its activities thanks to the support

of pharmaceutical firms. UNICEF is the biggest

customer of pharmaceutical firms that produce

vaccines. UNICEF purchases and controls the quality of vaccines by itself.”

Despite all efforts, journalists couldn’t find

the answer to the questions: who is going to be

responsible for the death of the boy from

Kramatorsk and who is going to pay compensation

to his family? Some time earlier, Health Ministry

officials stated that the producer of the vaccine

would be responsible. However, lawyers qualify

this statement of the Health Ministry officials

as a deliberate deception since the producer of

the vaccine didn’t conclude any contracts with

Ukraine – the producer of the vaccine had a

contract with UNICEF, which, in its turn, was

executing the order of WHO. Can our state claim

WHO? No, it is not possible even in theory

because the Indian vaccine was provided by WHO as

humanitarian aid and was accompanied with WHO’s

certificate of quality. Acknowledgment of the

fact that the death of the boy was caused by the

vaccine will undermine the authority of WHO and

will provoke distrust to its system of

certification and to the idea of “elimination of measles in Europe by 2010.”

In order to talk about somebody’s responsibility

it is first necessary to prove that the death was

actually caused by the vaccine. I think that

there is no chance of doing this and the

Kramatorsk case is vivid proof of this. It is not

clear what exactly the commission will examine

for the entire month, considering that the boy

has already been buried. The diagnosis has been

changed three times now, and even though the

final results are expected in a month, Chief

Sanitary Inspector N. Prodanchuk has already

announced that the death of the school-boy is not

connected with the vaccination.

Interestingly in India, after four little

children died in Tamil-Nadu state during the

recent scheduled vaccination against measles, the

government immediately banned using the vaccine

of national origin and stopped carrying out a

national anti-measles immunization program.

Nevertheless, in Ukraine, healthcare officials

are not taking the idea of stopping the mass

vaccination into consideration: despite the order

of the Minister of Health, Kyiv students are

being taken to medical centers for vaccination starting Monday…

--------------------------------------------------------

Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

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