Center for Strategic & International Studies’ “Smart Global Health Blog”: WHO’s SAGE Gives Final Nod to April Polio Vaccine Switch
Nellie Bristol, senior fellow with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, discusses the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization’s recommendation that the world move forward with an April 2016 switch from trivalent to bivalent oral polio vaccines (OPV), as “the first stage in eventual worldwide withdrawal of all OPV and replacement with inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV).” Bristol notes the challenges and risks of making the switch, such as the possibility of vaccine-derived outbreaks (10/27).