Ukraine could destroy 3.7M polio vaccines over protocol breach

KIEV, Ukraine, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- A healthcare lobby group in Ukraine is urging for the destruction of 3.7 million U.N.-donated polio vaccines despite the risk of a potential outbreak.

The All-Ukrainian Council for Patients Rights and Safety group argues the vaccines are unsafe. The vaccines were frozen after development and they partially thawed during air transport from the Sanofi Pasteur manufacturer in France to the Ukraine. The vaccines were later refrozen.

The World Health Organization said the transport and refreezing process was carried out in accordance with the best international practices. The Ukrainian lobby group argues the process contradicts national guidelines that state the vaccines cannot be refrozen, The Guardian reported.

"We must absolutely destroy the vaccine, or pass it on to some poorer countries," council President Viktor Serdyuk said. "Good or bad -- it does not matter. We should vaccinate safely and according to the protocol."

Fears of a polio outbreak began in September after two children were paralyzed by the infectious viral disease in the first European cases since 2010. Ukraine has the lowest vaccination rates in Europe. Fewer than 14 percent of 1-year-olds have been immunized against the disease.

Many in the Ukraine would rather take the risk of their children possibly contracting polio by not immunizing them than to use vaccines they deem dangerous.

"The vaccinations are much more dangerous than the illnesses that they treat," Olga Makarenko told BBC News. "Nobody knows how the vaccines were stored. No-one knows if the expiration dates were changed. Vaccines are a serious thing. There are conditions for transporting, storing and producing them."

The WHO asserts the vaccines are safe.

"The way they've been stored is the normal practice. That's how it's been done all over the world," Dr. Dorit Nitzan told The Guardian. "I keep telling the investigators, 'These vaccines are the best you could have ever asked for ... what more do you want?' But their view is that proper protocols must be followed. They just do that -- but they [have forgotten] about the children."