The CIA Aided Polio's Comeback–but Media Have Forgotten the Story

[Disir]

Polio had been battled to near-extinction after decades of effort, but this year the WHO confirmed 68 new cases and declared it an international public health emergency. Nearly 80 percent of those cases are in Pakistan.

Why is this?

The CIA Aided Polio's Comeback?but Media Have Forgotten the Story

That article perfectly demonstrates how the media jacks with us.

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - if we can put a man onna moon, we can wipe out polio...

Can The World Finally Wipe Out Polio?
October 20, 2017 - The world is incredibly close to wiping out polio. This year the number of polio cases has shrunk to fewer than a dozen. And those cases are in just two countries- Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We are definitely encouraged by the decline in number of cases," says Dr. Rana Safdar, the national coordinator for polio eradication in Pakistan. His country has seen the number of reported polio cases drop from more than 300 in 2014 to just 5 so far in 2017. "We hope to completely eliminate transmission during the current low transmission season, which starts from September and ends in May," h says. "We are very confident we can do this. But the last mile is always very difficult." Pakistan has been holding national polio immunization days in which a quarter of a million vaccinators attempt to make sure 38 million children get all three doses of the oral polio vaccine. "We must reach these children from the coast of Karachi to the mountains in the highest part of Pakistan," Dr. Rana says.

If polio transmission is stopped in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, it would be a major milestone in public health. Assuming the virus doesn't manage to take root elsewhere, polio would be only the second human disease to be eradicated after smallpox. And virologists say smallpox was a far easier target than polio. With smallpox if someone was infectious they were also visibly ill. Polio on the other hand can be spread by people who show no signs of being sick. The polio virus can also hide in and spread through sewage. With smallpox, officials just needed to contain the virus at the sick patients' beds. Polio is far more wily.

Health worker administers dose of polio vaccine​

A global plan to eradicate polio launched in 1988 set an eradication date of the year 2000. The program made incredible progress, dropping the number of cases year from more than 300,000 worldwide to just 11 today. But the eradication program has cost billions of dollars and has struggled to deal the virus a decisive fatal blow. In 2014 Africa appeared to be polio free only to have the paralytic disease pop back up in Nigeria two years later. The last case reported in Africa (or for that matter anywhere other than in Pakistan or Afghanistan) was in more than a year ago in Nigeria. Cases of vaccine-derived polio have re-emerged in Syria and other conflict zones. As long as the live vaccine is still being used, the potential for vaccine-derived cases remain. These cases stem from strains of the oral vaccine that have mutated and regained strength in the environment. But the plan is to stop using the live, oral vaccine as soon as wild polio is wiped out. At that point the whole world would exclusively be using an injectable vaccine that doesn't contain live virus.

Dr. Rana in Pakistan is confident that that day is coming soon. Polio, he says, is in its last days and will soon be wiped out. "We are sure we will meet our goal very soon," he says. Originally Pakistan had set that goal as 2016. Earlier the Global Polio Eradication Initiative had set the year 2000 as the target for polio's demise. Despite those missed deadlines, the number of polio cases globally is at an all-time low and the world appears closer to being polio-free than ever before. On Friday at 11 a.m. ET, NPR and the The Forum at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health will present a discussion with polio experts: "Eradicating Polio: Reaching the Last Child." The panelists will talk about how the world has come so close to this "last mile" of polio eradication and what steps need to be taken to end transmission. The discussion will be livestreamed on our website.

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The virus is not circulating throughout, but only in very remote or very small areas...

Almost To The End Of Polio
24 Oct.`17 | WASHINGTON - There are only two places in the entire world where children have caught polio this year: Afghanistan and Pakistan. In these countries, the virus is not circulating throughout, but only in very remote or very small areas.

Nearly 30 years ago, the polio virus paralyzed 1,000 children a day in 125 countries. The numbers have dropped so dramatically thanks to a global effort to wipe out the polio virus. Carol Pandak of Rotary International calls the effort 'herculean.' "Hundreds of thousands of frontline health care workers are out there every day immunizing children in urban areas, in remote areas, in all sorts of settings,' Pandak says. Rotary International was the first organization to promote the global effort to end polio. It has since become a partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), which includes the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

At one time, health workers in some countries risked their lives to immunize the children. Pandak says the vaccinators are now people from the communities they work in which has helped alleviate some of the safety issues. In areas of conflict, Pandak says security personnel accompany them. Dr. Flavia Bustreo at the World Health Organization says the challenge now is to get to zero cases and to maintain that level for at least three years, just to make sure the virus is no longer circulating. The key to that, she says, is strong surveillance so every single case is detected and children are immunized. The GPEI has developed a network of laboratories around the world that can identify the disease. Maintaining these laboratories and the cost of distributing the vaccine is both a huge undertaking and an enormous expense.

The polio virus is a disease that is only found in humans. It doesn't infect animals, which is why it can be eradicated. Dr. David Nabarro at the UN says getting to the end is actually the hardest part of the campaign because governments and organizations have to keep up their commitment until there are no more cases. 'We've got to remain vigilant and focused until the last case has been found and that we have got everybody protected.' Once the final case of polio is recorded, it will take three years to ensure that the last case is, in fact, the final one. That means that if the final case is seen this year, all of these programs will continue to need funding and volunteers until 2020. That's why the theme of this year's World Polio Day is "We're Not Done Yet."

Almost To The End Of Polio