Cyprus-Forum.com

[brother]

Faulty vaccines in the north
By Simon Bahceli


SERIOUS doubts were raised on Monday over the effectiveness of inoculations being given to children in the Turkish Cypriot north following an enquiry into a doctor accused of injecting children with saline solution rather than vaccines.

The accusations were made several months ago when independent tests were carried out on a number of children who had been injected with vaccines by Dr Remzi Gardiyanoglu. The results indicated that the effectiveness of the vaccines used were below standard.

This led to an enquiry organised by the Turkish Cypriot ‘health ministry’ and the physicians association in which blood samples from 190 children inoculated by Gardiyan were compared with those of a control group of 126 children inoculated by six other doctors.

The enquiry found that Gardiyanoglu’s patients’ resistance to measles, German measles, whooping cough, and mumps were all below the averages of the control group, and below standards outlined by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Interestingly, however, Gardiyanoglu’s inoculations against smallpox proved more effective than those of the control group, but neither Gardiayanoglu’s or the control group’s resistance came near the level 70 per cent effectiveness considered normal by the WHO.

Speaking at a press conference on the matter on Monday, Turkish Cypriot ‘health minister’ Huseyin Celal said, “This enquiry has taught us a lot of things”. But he insisted the findings in no way indicated Gardiyanoglu had been injecting his patients with saline solution rather than carrying out proper inoculations.

He did say, however, that Gardiyanoglu had, it seemed, obtained his vaccines from an “unofficial source”.

Celal called for a review on the methods used for inoculation and stricter controls on where doctors, in both the ‘state’ and private sectors, obtain their vaccines. He insisted that public health was not at risk.

Physicians Association president Dr Bulent Dizdarli said many of Gardiyanoglu’s patients would need to be reinoculated, adding that the doctor would be called to appear before the association’s ethics committee.

If Gardiyanoglu is found to have acted unethically, the committee has the authority to take disciplinary action against him. This raises the possibility that Gardiyanoglu could, in theory at least, be struck off.

However, some parents whose children have received inoculations in the last four years say a solution to the problem rests not with Gardiyanoglu, but with the vaccines themselves.
“All the smallpox vaccinations given in the last four years were substandard,” one parent told the Mail.

Gardiyanoglu’s sources said yesterday he would make statements later this week on the origins of the vaccines he used.

[brother]

Is there no end to the shabby treatment dished out by dodgy doctors after a quick buck.

[brother]

In short this is a scandal, playing with our childrens lives is unacceptable.