Impossible is Nothing

A very important milestone almost passed by me and I believe most is us here in India. Involved in the humdrum busyness of life, we forgot about the health workers who knocked on our doors to enquire whether there was a young baby in the house and whether the baby had been given the vaccine.

The milestone;

No polio incident were recorded in the last one year in India !

It was a tremendous achievement considering the herculean effort that was required to achieve it.

Hats off to these warriors!

A chart showing the  achievement from the Los Angeles Times - 

At the time I was contemplating writing about his, I came across a message on Google+ from  Chris Miller on vaccines and breast milk   in which he takes on anti vaccination goof balls  and castigates this article titled  “CDC researchers say mothers should stop breastfeeding to boost ‘efficacy’ of vaccines.”

But why is this chart and Chris Miller's post of interest to us?

Two reasons;

The chartist would have had the data for other countries where the polio is endemic. Rather than showing the data for all the countries he has focussed on India – no confusing data. You do not have to show all the data that you possess – use data effectively.

Secondly, it is critical for us to read the original report/study rather than depend on what someone else has managed to understand or has purposely manipulated to further his or her cause. I had written about this before in an earlier post on learning techniques – “Misleading Guidance”  

Read Chris’s article yourself and it is important to do so if you have young children.  All that  I will say is “Their recommendation is that the mother delay breast-feeding for a little while beforehand and a little while afterwards, to give the vaccine time to get into the kid before the breast milk neutralizes it all.

Breast feeding is important and so are vaccines ! and yes Chris - cool stuff this - how vaccines work, how breast milk impedes the efficacy and what to do about it!