Huffington Post: The Road to Making Polio a Disease of the Past
Yvonne Maldonado, chief of pediatric infectious disease at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford Children’s Health

“…Now that we are so close to eradicating all poliovirus infection from the face of the earth, the risk of spreading mutated oral vaccine polioviruses is very concerning. So concerning, that we and others around the world are conducting extensive research on how the oral polio vaccine strains are spread from person to person and into the environment. With a $3.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, I am heading up a study as the Director of Stanford University School of Medicine’s Global Child Health Program and with colleagues at the National Institute for Public Health in Mexico. In this study, we are investigating the rate and duration of person to person transmission and environmental spread of the live, oral polio vaccine in Mexican communities. The results of the study could affect public policy not only in Mexico, but all around the world…” (4/9).