Maxim Tucker has been reporting for The Guardian on a worrying development in the Ukraine-polio story that has been bubbling under for the past few weeks:
A healthcare lobby group is arguing for the destruction of 3.7 million polio vaccines donated to Ukraine by the UN, despite the risk (pdf) that a new outbreak of the disease could spread across the country and into the EU.
The all-Ukrainian council for patients’ rights and safety has alleged the vaccines are unsafe, because the frozen vaccines partially thawed while in air transit to Ukraine from the manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur in France. Although the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the transport and refreezing were carried out in line with international best practice, the complaint alleges that the process contradicts a set of Ukrainian guidelines that state the vaccines cannot be refrozen.
“We must absolutely destroy the vaccine, or pass it on to some poorer countries,” said Viktor Serdyuk, president of the council. “Good or bad – it does not matter. We should vaccinate safely and according to the protocol.”
The vaccines remain behind lock and key in government warehouses after the ministry of internal affairs launched an inquiry into whether they had been stored in the correct way. Ukrainian ministers are meeting this week to decide whether to release or incinerate the drugs.
The WHO says the vaccines are safe. Dr Dorit Nitzan, head of the organisation’s Ukraine office, said: “The way they’ve been stored is the normal practice. That’s how it’s been done all over the world.
“I keep telling the investigators, ‘These vaccines are the best you could have ever asked for – Canadian money, Unicef, pre-qualified by WHO, Sanofi Pasteur, made in France – what more do you want?’ But their view is that proper protocols must be followed. They just do that – but they [have forgotten] about the children.”
The move puts more than three million unvaccinated children at risk of the debilitating sickness. Two children, respectively aged 10 months and four years old, have already been paralysed after contracting polio in the first case of the disease in Europe since 2010. Hundreds more are believed to be carrying the virus, which could spread rapidly through a country where less than 50% of children and 14% of infants are inoculated against the disease.
“What we see is the tip of the iceberg. When two cases are presenting there are usually at least 200 carriers behind each one,” said Nitzan.
“There is no doubt we will see more cases. The outbreak is here, and it’s going to be huge – if nothing is done.”
Read the entire article here.
Here is today's map of the latest situation in the Donbas conflict zone -- courtesy of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (click image to enlarge):
Here's a big MH17 story from our news desk:
A British NGO has published a summary report claiming that a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile system shot down a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet on July 17, 2014, over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard.
Bellingcat, which analyzes information available on the Internet, said on October 8 that the Buk antiaircraft system involved in the incident can be traced from the Russian city of Kursk in June 2014 to a field outside the Ukrainian town of Snizhne in Donetsk Oblast on the day of the flight MH17 disaster.
The next day, the launcher from the same Buk system -- with only three missiles instead of the normal compliment of four -- was documented to be near the Russian border in Luhansk Oblast, the report says.
"We have looked at all the open-source investigation we've done over the last 18 months and it seems a pretty firm conclusion that the Russian military provided the missile launcher that shot down MH17, that the missile was launched from outside of Snizhne," Bellingcat founder and director Eliot Higgins says. "And we were able to track the Buk missile launcher back to the actual unit who provided it, the 53rd Brigade."
Higgins added that Bellingcat has forwarded information about the individual members of the 53rd Brigade who might have been involved in shooting down MH17 to authorities investigating the incident.
The Bellingcat report also contradicts four claims made by the Russian Defense Ministry at a press conference on July 21, 2014, at which Russian officials claimed MH17 may have been shot down by a Ukrainian military jet or by a Buk system controlled by the Ukrainian military.
Bellingcat alleges that the Russian military misrepresented video, radar, and photographic evidence at that press conference. "Alternative scenarios presented by the Russian Ministry of Defense and [Buk manufacturer] Almaz-Antey are at best deeply flawed, and at worst show a deliberate attempt to mislead using fabricated evidence," Bellingcat says.
Moscow has denied Russian military involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The official report on the MH17 disaster by an international Joint Investigation Team, with which Bellingcat cooperates, will be issued on October 13. A preliminary report on the investigation's findings that was released in July said MH17 was brought down by a Buk missile launched from an area held by Russia-backed separatists.