Report: ‘Polio-like’ disease a menace to CA children

by Chris Reed | February 24, 2014 10:45 am

Yahoo News, which is gearing up to be a player on the regional and national news scene, has a troubling new report about California:

“Over a one-year period, five children in California developed a polio-like illness that caused severe weakness or paralysis in their arms and legs, a new case study reports. 

“In two of the children, their symptoms have now been linked with an extremely rare virus called enterovirus-68.

“Like the poliovirus, which has been eradicated in the U.S. since 1979 thanks to the polio vaccine, strains of enterovirus in rare cases can invade and injure the spine.

“These are the first reported cases of polio-like symptoms being caused by enterovirus in the United States.”

But the Yahoo article[1] doesn’t say where in California the cases occurred. Nor does CNN’s version[2]. This is crucial, because there are some indications the polio-like illness is centered in Asia, raising the question of whether the five children were immigrants.

However, all the children with the polio-like illness had been inoculated against polio, which suggests they weren’t from Third World countries without strong public health systems.

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2014/02/24/report-polio-like-disease-a-menace-to-ca-children/

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