Originally published November 11 2005
Canadian Amish group may be in danger of a polio outbreak
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
An Amish community in the Middlesex county area of Ontario is being observed by Canadian health officials for a possible outbreak of polio after being exposed to a vaccine-related form of the disease by a group of American visitors.
Canadian public health officials are keeping a close eye on a southwestern Ontario Amish community after residents there may have been exposed to a vaccine-related form of polio through visitors from the United States.
For privacy reasons, Canadian officials will not specifically identify the Ontario community, but it is located somewhere in Middlesex County, which includes such cities as London and Woodstock.
In early October, some of the Middlesex Amish visited an Amish settlement in Minnesota and a week later, some of the U.S. families were at a wedding in the Ontario community, attended by about 1,000 people.
The Minnesota settlement has since been experiencing a mini-outbreak of infection with vaccine-associated polio, or VAP.
On Oct. 14, health officials began testing stool and saliva samples from willing members of the Middlesex community, said David Jensen, a spokesman for the Ontario Ministry of Health.
Dr. Graham Pollett, Middlesex County's medical officer of health, said those results still have to be confirmed by tests being done at the public health lab in Winnipeg, where the samples are cultured.
The polio cases in the central Minnesota community of 24 families began when an eight-month-old girl was found to be carrying the virus, which spread to four children at two neighbouring farms.
The child, whose name is being withheld by health officials, has an immune deficiency that doesn't allow her body to rid itself of the virus.
A diagnosis of polio infection was confirmed Sept. 27 after the child was given tests due to severe diarrhea, said Dr. Harry Hull, the state epidemiologist for Minnesota.
is that somehow an immuno-deficient person who's chronically infected with the virus, who's come in from outside the country or somebody from this country who's gone overseas and either got vaccinated or picked up a vaccine virus there, has somehow exposed this child ...
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