Next Year Could Mark The End Of Polio

[progressoid]

The disease that once paralyzed hundreds of thousands of kids a year around the globe is now down to just a few dozen cases this year. "We are aiming to halt all transmission of wild polio virus next year," says Peter Crowley, the head of UNICEF's global efforts against polio.

If polio is stopped, it will be only the second human disease to be eliminated. Smallpox was the first — the last case was in 1977.

There's reason to be optimistic that this gigantic feat of public health is within humanity's grasp. The World Health Organization says polio transmission has stopped for the first time ever in Africa. Last month, Africa's last bastion of polio — Nigeria — celebrated going an entire year without recording any new cases.

The red dots on the map below show how cases continued to pop up over a wide belt in the middle of the continent from 2010 until 2014.

With Nigeria off the list of countries where the virus is self-sustaining, there are now just two nations in the world where transmission has never been fully stopped: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of the 51 cases of wild polio detected globally so far this year, all of them have been in those two countries. The problem is that until polio is actually stopped in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the multibillion-dollar global effort against the virus is going to have to continue everywhere.

...

Public health officials have been declaring that polio is on the verge of being wiped out ever since Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin came up with vaccines against it in the 1950s. At that point the world was tallying hundreds of thousands of cases each year. Now, it's just a few dozen cases globally, and polio's demise does appear closer than ever. The disease that in its heyday affected Franklin Roosevelt, Olympian Wilma Rudolph and actors Mia Farrow and Donald Sutherland will be relegated to the history books.

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/10/26/451908297/next-year-could-mark-the-end-of-polio

[Human101948]

1. But vaccinations are a death sentence!

Oh my God! Thimeresol! I always get flu from the flu shot! I'd rather get Shingles!

[valerief]

2. But has smallpox really disappeared? Don't governments keep batches of it on hand?

And wouldn't they do the same with polio?

You know, just in case the populace gets really fed up.

[Warpy]

3. It would be nice but there are likely unreported cases deep in the bush

where people are being disinformed by imams who think vaccines are a western plot to make dicks go limp. I kid you not.

In the meantime, the continued push to immunize people over the howls of the local religious potentates looks like it's having some success.

Just think, I've seen the end of smallpox. I'd love to see the end of polio (which I had) and Guinea worms.