Vaccine court
The VICP covers all vaccines listed on the Vaccine Injury Table maintained by the Secretary of Health and Human Services; in 2007 the list included vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), polio, hepatitis B, varicella (chicken pox), "Haemophilus influenzae" type b, rotavirus, and pneumonia. From 1988 until 8 January 2008, 5,263 claims relating to autism, and 2,865 non-autism claims, were made to the VICP. 925 of these claims, one autism-related (see previous rulings), were compensated, with 1,158 non-autism and 350 autism claims dismissed; awards (including attorney's fees) totaled $847 million. The VICP also applies to claims for injuries suffered before 1988; there were 4,264 of these claims of which 1,189 were compensated with awards totaling $903 million.
Poliomyelitis eradication
A public health effort to permanently eliminate all cases of poliomyelitis (polio) infection around the world began in 1988, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Rotary Foundation. These organizations, along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and The Gates Foundation, have spearheaded the campaign through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), which helps to coordinate vaccination campaigns, environmental monitoring, evaluation of possible polio cases and logistics. Successful eradication of infectious diseases has been achieved twice before, with smallpox and bovine rinderpest.
Prevention of disease spread is accomplished by vaccination. There are two kinds of polio vaccine—oral polio vaccine (OPV), which uses weakened poliovirus, and inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), which is injected. The OPV is less expensive and easier to administer, and can spread immunity beyond the person vaccinated, creating contact immunity. It has been the predominant vaccine used. However, under conditions of long-term vaccine virus circulation in under-vaccinated populations, mutations can reactivate the virus to produce a polio-inducing strain, while the OPV can also, in rare circumstances, induce polio or persistent asymptomatic infection in vaccinated individuals, particularly those that are immunodeficient. Being inactivated, the IPV is free of these risks but does not induce contact immunity. IPV is more costly and the logistics of delivery are more challenging.
The 22 diagnosed wild polio virus (WPV) cases worldwide in 2017 represented a reduction from the 719 diagnosed cases in 2000 and a reduction from the estimated 350,000 cases when the eradication effort began in 1988. Of the three strains of polio virus, the last recorded wild case caused by type 2 (WPV2) was in 1999, and WPV2 was declared eradicated in 2015. Type 3 (WPV3) is last known to have caused polio on 11 November 2012, with all wild-virus cases since that date being due to type 1 (WPV1). All three types are represented among the periodic cases arising from mutated oral vaccine strains, so-called circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV). India is the latest country to have officially stopped endemic transmission of polio, with its last reported case in 2011. Three countries remain where the disease is endemic—Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.