Rumours spark polio vaccine panic in South

IT took just one false rumour for pandemonium to break out in parts of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Thousands of parents and their children protested outside hospitals in Bangalore on Sunday evening while more than 100 people were arrested in Coimbatore after a clash. Both incidents were related to reports that children had fallen sick after being given polio drops and that the medicine caused a child's death in Tamil Nadu's Erode district.

However, the Bangalore police said nobody had fallen ill from the vaccine and filed a complaint against a local TV station, saying it helped spread panic following the rumours of children contracting fever and vomiting. Refuting the rumours, Karnataka Commissioner of Health and Family Welfare, P N Sreenevasachary on Monday said that "no adverse effects" had been felt by any of the 60.87 lakh children in the state who had been administered the vaccine yesterday.

He clarified that the child who died had been suffering from a serious health condition and his death was in no way connected to the polio drops.

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