Polio resurfaces in Mali from Ebola-hit Guinea - WHO
Source: Channnel NewsAsia
GENEVA: There is a high risk of polio spreading in Ebola-ravaged Guinea and Mali, the World Health Organization said on Monday, after a Guinean toddler travelled to Mali and became that country's first case of the crippling disease in more than four years.
Preliminary tests by authorities in Mali's capital showed the 19-month-old was paralysed on July 20, seven days before being brought to Bamako for treatment. The strain of the virus is the same as one detected in Siguiri in Guinea's Kankan region, in August 2014.
The Mali polio case, caused by a strain of the virus known as type 2, is the second setback in a week for global efforts to eradicate polio, after two cases were reported in Ukraine..
"The risk of spread is considered to be high in both countries due to low rates of vaccination coverage in both Mali and Guinea," WHO spokesman Cory Couillard said in an emailed comment to Reuters.
Read more: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/polio-resurfaces-in-mali/2109270.html
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The safer, killed virus form used here and in Western Europe costs ten times as much. People with compromised immune systems can catch polio from the weakened virus vaccine. Typically they don't know they have compromised immune systems until after vaccination. But wild polio continued to exist in three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Afghanistan and Pakistan have some regions where government health programs can't reach.
Nigeria is a more interesting tale. They were on the verge of eradicating polio when someone started a rumor that Dick Cheney had poisoned the polio vaccines in order to kill Muslims. (Now how could anyone believe that kindly grandfatherly old Dick Cheney could do such a thing? (extreme 
)) Lots of parents stopped getting their children immunized and polio came roaring back. Now it has apparently spread from there to other African nations where public health systems broke down due to the Ebola outbreaks.
We were so close to eliminating polio everywhere and making the vaccinations for it unnecessary, just like smallpox. Now it is resurgent.
