Gates Foundation Was Not Kicked Out of India
The Claim
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was kicked out of India after their polio vaccine paralyzed children.
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Emerging story
A meme from 2017 began recirculating in summer 2020. It claims that that “47,000 children” were “crippled and permanently disabled in India, a direct result of Bill Gates’ polio vaccine,” leading to the Gates family being kicked out of India. Further, it purports to be “100% proven.”
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found that the circulating claim seems to be based on India's governmental decision to take over funding for the Immunization Technical Support Unit, which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had previously funded. Senior health ministry official Soumya Swaminathan said that India is trying to move away from any foreign funding: “There was a perception that an external agency is funding it, so there could be influence.”
Despite the funding change, the BMGF foundation continues to work in India to this day. The Indian government said in a statement that the BMGF “continues to collaborate and support the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.”
The claim about the BMGF disabling children appears to come from a paper in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics that says that nearly 50,000 children in areas that received the polio vaccine experienced non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP).
However, the increased number of reported cases is because of increased monitoring and reporting, not due to more cases. NPAFP is not caused by the polio virus, so it seems improbable that the vaccine would lead to increased cases.
The claim likely began recirculating in summer 2020 due to an uprising of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus vaccine, Bill Gates, and 5G. There is no evidence supporting the allegation that the BMGF was kicked out of India.
