Polio reprise

waltky

Wise ol' monkey
Feb 6, 2011
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Okolona, KY
Polio rears its ugly head...
:eek:
Polio strain spreads to China from Pakistan
20 September 2011 - Polio is highly infectious and affects the nervous system, sometimes resulting in paralysis
Polio has been found in China for the first time since 1999 after spreading from Pakistan, the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed. It said a strain of polio (WPV1) found in China was genetically linked with the type now circulating in Pakistan. At least seven cases have now been confirmed in China's western Xinjiang province, which borders Pakistan.

The WHO warned there was a high risk of the crippling virus spreading further during Muslim pilgrimages to Mecca. Polio (also called poliomyelitis) is highly infectious and affects the nervous system, sometimes resulting in paralysis. It is transmitted through contaminated food, drinking water and faeces.

'Right things done'

On Tuesday, the WHO said the polio cases in Xinjiang had been detected in the past two months. The Chinese authorities are now investigating the cases, and a mass vaccination campaign has been launched in the region. "So far all the right things are being done," WHO spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer told Reuters news agency. Polio was last brought into China from India in 1999. China's last indigenous case was in 1994. Pakistan is one of a handful of countries where polio remains endemic.

WHO officials had been warning for some time that the virus was spreading within the country to previously uninfected areas. The UN's children fund, Unicef, has said that eradicating polio from Pakistan depends on delivering oral vaccines to each and every child, including the most vulnerable and the hardest to reach. Polio was virtually eliminated from the Western hemisphere in the 20th Century.

BBC News - Polio strain spreads to China from Pakistan
 
being old enough to remember polio...this is tragic news...always support the rotary club...they have been trying for years to do away with polio
 
I remember standing in line at F A March elementary back in 1955 lining up to take Polio vaccine that was daubed onto a sugar cube.

Now, thanks to the ease of travel around the world including shitholes where vaccines are uncommon, that scourge is back.
 
did you know polio will go out of remission in adults that suffered it as a child?

No I didn't.

I knew kids, usally somewhat older than me, who had polio.

I had two teachers in High school who had to drag their polio ravaged legs around with them.

People cannot really understand what a plague this was on the people just a few generations ago.
 
Amazing how fast they fixed the problem. It was common before 1950 when it infected 1/10 of the kids in the country and was a killer. By 1960 it was a non issue. It was ancient history.

I remember they still gave us TB tests as late as 1970, which is the last year I remember getting it.
 
Granny says if it gets outta the lab - we all gonna die, just like it says in dat endtime plague inna Bible...
:eek:
Black Death genetic code 'built'
12 October 2011 - The genetic code of the germ that caused the Black Death has been reconstructed by scientists for the first time.
The researchers extracted DNA fragments of the ancient bacterium from the teeth of medieval corpses found in London. They say the pathogen is the ancestor of all modern plagues. The research, published in the journal Nature, suggests the 14th Century outbreak was also the first plague pandemic in history. Humans have rarely encountered an enemy as devastating as the bacterium, Yersinia pestis. Between 1347 and 1351 it sparked the Black Death, an infection carried by fleas that spread rapidly across Europe killing around 50 million people.

Now scientists have uncovered some of the genetic secrets of the plague, thanks to DNA fragments drilled from the teeth of victims buried in a graveyard in London's East Smithfield. Professor Johannes Krause from the University of Tubingen, Germany, was a member of the research team. He said all current strains circulating in the world are directly related to the medieval bacterium. "It turns out that this ancient Yersinia pestis strain is very close to the common ancestor of all modern strains that can infect humans," he said. "It's the grandmother of all plague that's around today."

Previously researchers had assumed the Black Death was another in a long line of plague outbreaks dating back to ancient Greece and Rome. The Justinian Plague that broke out in the 6th Century was estimated to have killed 100 million people. But the new research indicates that plagues like the Justinian weren't caused by the same agent as the medieval epidemic. "It suggests they were either caused by a Yersinia pestis strain that is completely extinct and it didn't leave any descendants which are still around today or it was caused by a different pathogen that we have no information about yet," said Professor Krause.

Tooth power
 
Fight against polio bein' ramped up...
:cool:
Global leaders vow to rid world of polio
Sun, Oct 30, 2011 - CROSSROADS: Commonwealth leaders, as well as Bill Gates, pledged millions of dollars more to eradicate the disease, which threatens to spread back across the globe
World leaders yesterday added their weight to a push to eradicate polio, pledging millions of dollars in new funds to bring an end to the crippling and potentially fatal disease. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who is hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, said her country would spend A$50 million (US$53.5 million) over four years toward the global fight. “While polio remains anywhere in the world it is a threat to anyone,” she told a joint news conference with leaders from Britain, Canada and two of the world’s four polio endemic countries — Pakistan and Nigeria — by her side. “We are here today to demonstrate our commitment to ending the fight against polio, that is ending polio for all time,” Gillard said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his country would commit further investments in polio surveillance and immunizations without giving a figure, while philanthropist Bill Gates pledged US$40 million in new funding. “We’re at a crossroads,” Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said via a video message, adding that recent cases in China highlighted the risk of polio spreading back across the globe. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said he would raise annual spending on fighting polio from US$17 million to US$30 million from next year. Jonathan said while the disease had been reduced by 75 percent in the African nation, it remained present in some states and had started to make a comeback over the past year.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, whose government in January pledged £40 million (US$64.5 million) to fight the disease, said the world was in sight of eradicating the disease. “Today for the vast majority of countries, polio has been eliminated and the harrowing images of children in iron lungs banished to the past,” he said. “But for all this progress we haven’t quite finished the job and the truth is that nearly eradicated is just not good enough.” Cameron said the world now ran the danger of going backwards on ending the disease, which mainly affects children. “If we fail to get rid of polio we run the risk of seeing it spread back to countries from which it has been eradicated,” he said. Polio remains a challenge for the 54-nation Commonwealth, with three of the world’s four endemic countries — India, Nigeria and Pakistan — members. Afghanistan is the fourth state in which the highly contagious disease has not been eradicated.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said he was concerned that polio had re-emerged in his country, which shares a long, rugged and porous border with war-ravaged Afghanistan. “This situation is totally unacceptable,” he said, adding that medical staff often had difficulty reaching those in need given the difficult terrain and the problem of insurgents. In areas where the oral vaccine was most needed, he said, there were people who were “so fanatical they don’t let the doctors into this area.” “But we are trying our best,” he added. Gillard said it was possible the disease, which in 1954 held Perth in its grip, preventing Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II from staying onshore during her maiden visit Down Under, could be ended forever. “Change is possible,” she said. “This is an issue which within our lifetime was a problem right around the world. Now we are in grasping distance of the end of polio worldwide and that is what we are determined to do.”

Global leaders vow to rid world of polio - Taipei Times
 
Boko Haram killin' polio workers in Nigeria...
:eek:
Gunmen kill Nigeria women giving polio vaccines
Feb 8,`13 -- Gunmen suspected of belonging to a radical Islamic sect shot and killed at least nine women who were taking part in a polio vaccination drive in northern Nigeria on Friday, highlighting the religious tensions surrounding the inoculation of children in one of the few nations where the disease still remains endemic.
The attack shocked residents of Kano, the largest city in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, where women often go from house to house to carry out the vaccination drives as Muslim families feel more comfortable allowing them inside their homes than men. It also signaled a new wave of anger targeting immunization drives in Nigeria, where clerics once claimed the vaccines were part of a Western plot to sterilize young girls. The first attack Friday morning happened in Kano's Hotoro Hayi neighborhood and saw gunmen arrive by three-wheel taxis and open fire. At least eight female vaccinators died in that attack, witnesses said.

The second attack, in the Unguwa Uku neighborhood, saw another four people killed, witnesses said. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of angering the radical sect known as Boko Haram. However, confusion surrounded the death toll, as Kano state police spokesman Musa Magaji Majia said the attacks killed only nine people - all of them women taking part in the drive and giving the oral vaccine drops to children. A local hospital later said it received only two corpses from the Unguwa Uku attack, with four others wounded.

Definitive death tolls for such attacks in Nigeria are difficult to obtain. Police and military forces in Nigeria routinely downplay such casualties, and families quickly bury the dead before the next sunset per local Muslim tradition. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the killing and injuring of health workers in Nigeria. "They were engaged in life-saving work, trying to vaccinate children," she told reporters. "Any violence that prevents children from receiving basic life-saving vaccines is absolutely unacceptable wherever it happens."

While police said they had no immediate suspects for the attacks, witnesses said they believed that Boko Haram had been behind the shootings. Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of the north, has been behind a series of violent attacks across northern Nigeria as part of its fight against the country's weak central government. Boko Haram is blamed for killing at least 792 people last year in Nigeria, according to an Associated Press count. That includes a massive attack in Kano last January that killed at least 185.

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Nigeria polio vaccinators shot dead in Kano
8 February 2013 - Nigeria is one of only three countries where polio is still endemic
Nine female polio vaccinators have been killed in two shootings at health centres in northern Nigeria, police have told the BBC. In the first attack in Kano the polio vaccinators were shot dead by gunmen who drove up on a motor tricycle. Thirty minutes later gunmen targeted a clinic outside Kano city as the vaccinators prepared to start work. Some Nigerian Muslim leaders have previously opposed polio vaccinations, claiming they could cause infertility. On Thursday, a controversial Islamic cleric spoke out against the polio vaccination campaign, telling people that new cases of polio were caused by contaminated medicine.

Such opposition is a major reason why Nigeria is one of just three countries where polio is still endemic. But this is believed to be the first time polio vaccinators have been attacked in the country. Some Kano residents told the BBC's Yusuf Yakasai in the city that other people injured in the first attack had been taken to hospital. A health official confirmed to the BBC that those killed in the second attack in Hotoro were female health workers - there were earlier reports that people waiting at the clinic may have been among those shot. Witnesses in Hotoro told the BBC gunmen also approached the health centre using a motor tricycle.

Kano banned motorbikes from carrying passengers after a recent attack on the prominent Muslim leader, the emir of Kano. Analysts believe the attacks may have been the work of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram but it has not yet commented and no group has said it carried out the attack. The group - whose name translates as "Western education is forbidden" - says it is fighting to overthrow the government and impose Sharia. It has been blamed for the deaths of some 1,400 people in central and northern Nigeria since 2010.

According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, there were 121 cases of polio in Nigeria last year, compared to 58 in Pakistan and 37 in Afghanistan. In the past month, polio workers have also been targeted and killed in Pakistan, where the Taliban have threatened anti-polio efforts - accusing health workers of working as US spies and alleging that the vaccine makes children sterile.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21381773
 
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Journalists arrested in polio killings...
:confused:
2 Nigeria journalists charged after polio killings
Feb 12,`13 -- Police in northern Nigeria arrested and charged two radio journalists and a local cleric alleged to have sparked the killings of at least nine women gunned down while trying to administer polio vaccines, officials said Tuesday. Police claimed their on-air comments about a vaccination campaign in the area inflamed the region and caused the attacks.
The allegations against the journalists working for Wazobia FM show the continuing struggle over free speech in Nigeria, a nation that came out of military rule only in 1999 and where simply taking photographs on the street can get a person arrested. Though Nigeria has a rambunctious free press, threats and attacks against journalists remain common and unsolved killings of reporters still haunt the country.

On Friday in Kano, the largest city in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, gunmen in three-wheel taxis attacked women preparing to give the oral-drop vaccines to children, killing at least nine, police said. Witnesses later said they saw at least 12 dead from the attack. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, though suspicion immediately fell on the sect known as Boko Haram, which is waging a campaign of guerrilla shootings and bombings across northern Nigeria.

A few days before the killings, Wazobia FM aired a program in which presenters talked about how one of the station's journalists had been attacked by local officials and had his equipment confiscated after coming upon a man who refused to allow his children to be vaccinated. The journalists and the cleric on the program apparently discussed the fears people have about the vaccine, which then spread through the city. Kano state police commissioner Ibrahim Idris ordered the journalists and the cleric be arrested immediately after Friday's attack.

Initially, Idris said the journalists would face charges of "culpable homicide" over the polio workers' deaths. Those charges can carry the death penalty. However, at an arraignment hearing Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors brought lesser charges that included conspiracy, inciting a disturbance and obstruction of a public servant. Magistrate Ibrahim Bello ordered a follow-up hearing Thursday. Onimisi Adaba, operation manager for Wazobia FM and its sister stations, later told The Associated Press that the radio group was "fully aware of the situation." "We are presently attending to the matter," Adaba said. He declined to comment further. There have long been suspicions about the polio vaccine in northern Nigeria, with people believing the drops would sterilize young girls.

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Hilary Koprowski, polio oral vaccine developer passes on at 96...
:confused:
Polio vaccine developer Koprowski dies at 96
Mon, Apr 15, 2013 - Hilary Koprowski, the Polish-born researcher who developed the first successful oral vaccination for polio, died this week at his Philadelphia home. He was 96.
Although not as well-known as fellow researchers Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, Koprowski’s 1950 clinical trial was the first to show it was possible to vaccinate against polio, the crippling and sometimes fatal disease that is now all but eradicated. Koprowski’s son, Christopher, said on Saturday that his father liked the scientific recognition his work received without the celebrity of Salk and Sabin. “He enjoyed not having his scientific work disrupted,” Christopher Koprowski said. “Not that he was a modest individual, mind you.”

Christopher Koprowski said his father had been sick for several months before dying on Thursday in the same home he had lived in since 1957. Hilary Koprowski self-administered the live-virus oral vaccine he developed before the 1950 trial — about two years before Salk’s injectable version using a dead form of the virus began testing with the backing of the US National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now the March of Dimes. Sabin, who Koprowski’s son said sometimes collaborated with his father, was the first to get the more effective oral version, which did not require boosters, licensed for use in the US.

Koprowski went on to become the director of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia from 1957 to 1991. Under his leadership, the independent research institution developed a rubella vaccine that helped eradicate the disease in much of the world, Wistar officials said. It was during that time the institute also developed a more effective rabies vaccine. A talented musician, Koprowski was a penniless immigrant in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, making money teaching piano before hooking up with a lab there and eventually moving to the US, his son said. “He was a great dad. He was colorful, charismatic,” Christopher Koprowski said. “He’s still the most brilliant person I’ve ever met.”

Polio vaccine developer Koprowski dies at 96 - Taipei Times
 
Taliban reverses course on polio vaccination...
:clap2:
Aid workers welcome Taliban pledge to support polio vaccination campaign
May 14, 2013 — Following a deadly winter for aid workers dispensing polio vaccines, the Afghan Taliban announced this week they would do their best to support those workers, as long as they are not foreign.
The Taliban released a statement Monday promising not only to grant health workers with polio vaccines safe passage in their territory, but also ordering their fighters to offer help. But, they added, workers and volunteers should be local. “Foreign employees should refrain from going to the region,” the statement warned, “and similarly the campaign should be harmonized with the regional conditions, Islamic values and local cultural traditions.” Along with Nigeria and Pakistan, Afghanistan is one of the last countries where polio is still endemic, according to the World Health Organization. Last month, when the government launched the second, annual round of vaccinations in its national health campaign, it also said in an official statement that two cases had already been reported this year, in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces. Last year, there were 37 polio cases nationwide.

Last year also saw the killing of a 16-year-old girl who was volunteering to fight polio in Kapisa province. Despite a 12-year military campaign by the U.S., NATO and Afghan government forces, the insurgents are present in many parts of the country. Sona Bari, spokesperson for the World Health Organization’s polio eradication initiative, said the Taliban have been friendly toward their efforts in the past. “The Afghan Taliban have never carried out targeted violence against polio workers,” she said. But, Bari noted, it’s critical to distinguish between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban. Many more polio workers have been killed in Pakistan, including seven murdered on New Year’s Eve. In early April, a Pakistani police officer escorting anti-polio workers was shot dead.

Bari also said that every country runs its own vaccination program under the initiative, so all of the workers in Afghanistan are Muslim locals. Despite the Taliban’s caveat about foreigners, many in Afghanistan are celebrating the insurgency’s change of heart. “Polio doesn’t care whether it infects the child of a Taliban fighter, a mullah, a doctor or anyone else,” said Ministry of Public Health spokesman Kanishka Turkistani. “We always tried to ask all parties in Afghanistan, including the insurgents, to help us and cooperate in the polio campaigns, so this is a very good message from the Taliban.”

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Taliban say will 'soon' release remaining Turks
May 13, 2013 -- A Taliban spokesman says four remaining Turks held by the militant group will be released shortly, without offering further details.
A Monday email statement from Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed said the recent release of another four Turks was intended as a "goodwill gesture" and "soon" the remaining four Turks still in their possession would also be freed.

He did not make any reference to the Afghan translator and two pilots -- one from Russia and one from Kyrgyzstan -- who were captured along with the eight Turks when bad weather forced their helicopter to make an emergency landing in the Taliban-stronghold of eastern Afghanistan's Logar province on April 21.

On Sunday Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said the freed Turks were taken to the Turkish Embassy in Kabul.

Source
 
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Polio outbreak spreading in Somalia...
:eek:
Somalia polio outbreak spreads; 105 recorded cases
Aug. 16,`13 — The U.N.'s humanitarian affairs office says a polio outbreak in Somalia is spreading.
The U.N. said Friday that Somalia has 105 confirmed cases of polio, with another 10 cases confirmed in neighboring Kenya.

Health officials are responding with vaccination campaigns that have reached 4 million people since the outbreak began in May, but those health officials cannot access about 600,000 children who live in areas of Somalia controlled by the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab.

The U.N. says five children have suffered paralysis from the virus, a fact that indicates that there are probably thousands more children with the virus who do not have symptoms.

Somalia polio outbreak spreads; 105 recorded cases
 
Polio turns up in Israel...
:eek:
RARE POLIO VIRUS SPREADS TO ISRAEL'S NORTH
Aug 21,`13 -- Israel's president is urging the country's children to get polio boosters after a rare appearance of the virus spread to the north of the country.
President Shimon Peres met with children getting vaccinations at a Jerusalem clinic on Wednesday together with the Health Minister, Yael German. German said new lab results show the "virus is migrating north and spreading."

Peres detailed the suffering his family endured when one of his children was stricken by polio as an infant. Israel this week began a nationwide campaign to inoculate children with booster drops after a rare discovery of the virus in the south of the country.

Israel already immunizes its children against the disease. The campaign gives a second boost of protection. There have been no clinical cases of the virus.

News from The Associated Press
 
did you know polio will go out of remission in adults that suffered it as a child?

this happened to my cousin. She'd had mild polio bout as an infant in 1950. Despite 'full recovery' by 5 years of age, years of running, yoga, vegetarian diet, recurred in her early 50's. While she no longer can run, most of the symptoms have been overcome. Still, one of her legs drags a bit.

The inoculations against polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, etc., would only be questioned by those spared the horrors visited upon the victims. Why expose another generation to those horrors? If some parents wish to 'spare' their children the problems that occur in infinitesimal percentages, homeschool them and keep them out of public areas.
 
No more new polio cases in India in three years...
:eusa_clap:
India is polio-free after 3 years with no new case
27 Mar.`14 — The scourge of polio ends in India with a lively 4-year-old girl, Rukhsar Khatoon, who became ill as a baby after her parents forgot to get her vaccinated.
Her barely perceptible limp the only lingering sign of the disease, Rukhsar was the last person to contract polio in the nation of 1.2 billion people. The World Health Organization formally declared India polio-free on Thursday, after three years with no new cases. It said the milestone means the entire Southeast Asian region, home to a quarter of the world's population, is considered free of the disease. Being declared polio-free once was considered all but impossible in a nation hobbled by corruption, poor sanitation and profound poverty. Although the disease could return, eradicating it is a landmark public health achievement. This is "a day that we have dreamt about," said Poonam Khetrpal Singh, a WHO official at a ceremony in New Delhi to declare the entire Southeast Asian region free of the disease. Singh described it as "a day that all countries fought hard for, and a day when all stakeholders come together to celebrate the victory of mankind over a dreaded disease."

Polio is a vaccine-preventable disease that has been eradicated in most countries. But it still causes paralysis or death in some parts of the world, including Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Children younger than 5 are especially vulnerable to the disease, which is spread through contaminated water or food. The virus attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis of muscles that leave limbs stunted or withered. Rukhsar's father, Abdul Shah, said the family had missed the regular polio vaccination camp in the village three years ago because Rukhsar was sick. After she recovered, the family simply forgot about getting her the polio drops. "We only got worried when she got a fever when she was around 15 months old and her foot was swollen," Shah said.

Rukhsar has recovered well. She helps her mother with chores, washing dishes by pumping water from a hand-pump that supplies the household's drinking water. She plays easily with her three other siblings, all younger than 10. "But if she walks for long, or runs around too much, her leg aches," Sabedabibi said. In 2011, when Rukhsar's case was detected in Shahpara village, 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of Kolkata, state health authorities immediately engulfed the surrounding districts with a rigorous immunization program, going door to door to check if every child had been immunized. States were told to treat every case of polio as a public health emergency.

India was in the middle of an intense campaign to battle the disease, with huge infusions of government funds and a new, more effective vaccine. "I realized we had been very negligent when the doctors told us Rukhsar had polio," said Shah, a farm laborer who supplements his meager income by making 'zari,' the gold thread embroidery used to embellish saris. "We've been lucky," he said, as Rukhsar climbed into his lap. "No one should suffer this fate."

http://news.yahoo.com/india-polio-free-3-years-no-case-120927146.html
 
The fight to wipe out polio...
:eusa_clap:
Polio vaccine drive is race against time
April 12, 2014 ~ The aim is to ensure Lebanon does not become the third country in the region after Syria and Iraq to have confirmed cases of polio, ending a more than decadelong absence of the highly infectious paralyzing disease.
“I’d never heard of the polio virus before I came to Lebanon,” says Hyam, a 25-year-old mother of four from Syria who now lives in the Bekaa Valley. “We came here five months ago from Hama, and a month or so ago I started to hear about it.”Clutching at her skirt are two small boys – Safwan, 2, and Khaled, 4 – who both got their second polio vaccination Friday as part of a Health Ministry-led national immunization drive. The aim is to ensure Lebanon does not become the third country in the region after Syria and Iraq to have confirmed cases of polio, ending a more than decadelong absence of the highly infectious paralyzing disease. “They were scared,” Hyam says, as she strokes Safwan’s black hair, “but it protects them from the virus, so it’s good.”

Polio attacks the nervous system and is incurable once caught. According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 200 infections lead to irreversible paralysis. Similarly, for every one child found with the most severe symptoms of polio, roughly 200 other children are likely to silently carry the virus. Before the Syrian war disrupted vaccination programs and displaced millions of people, the disease had been eradicated across the globe apart from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. The good news is that it is incredibly easy to prevent.

304053_mainimg.jpg

Women hold a Syrian refugee boy as he gets a polio vaccine in Faida, Friday, April 11, 2014.

At Faida, a string of informal tented settlements near Zahle that houses up to 6,000 Syrians, a group of women, babies and lost-looking toddlers wait their turn for the doctors. The vaccine, a small squirt of liquid administered orally, is so safe, easy and painless that it can be given to children the day they are born, although the wails and tears from most of the kids belie this fact. The vaccine must be taken at least three times in total, each roughly a month apart. For kids living in unsanitary conditions and suffering from malnourishment, increasingly the case for Syrian refugees and a growing number of poor Lebanese, four or five vaccines may be needed.

The Health Ministry, UNICEF and its implementing partners vaccinated 492,000 children under 5 of all nationalities during a 10-day immunization drive in March, some 84 percent of the nearly 600,000 they were targeting. This second campaign is to boost awareness, partly out of a fear that the risks of underimmunization are not fully understood. “One or two doses of the oral or injectable vaccine is simply not sufficient now that polio is spreading in the region,” said Dr. Hassan El Bushra, a representative of WHO. “Every child must participate in every round to prevent lifelong paralysis and keep Lebanon polio-free.”

Until April 15, children of any nationality under 5 can receive the vaccine for free at health centers, public and private schools and from private doctors. People will also be positioned at border crossings to catch refugees as they come in and will be traveling door to door in areas considered to be at high risk. Mobile teams, such as the one in Faida, will be visiting 1,185 informal settlements nationwide. Wherever the polio vaccine is available, Vitamin A drops to strengthen the immune system and a vaccine for under-18s against measles and rubella will also be given out. “It’s a race against time,” a UNICEF worker at Faida who specializes in polio vaccination campaigns told The Daily Star. “There are no confirmed cases in Lebanon yet, but the virus does not need a passport, it can go anywhere at any time.”

Polio vaccine drive is race against time | News , Lebanon News | THE DAILY STAR
 
Polio spread becomes world health emergency...
:eek:
UN: SPREAD OF POLIO NOW AN WORLD HEALTH EMERGENCY
May 5,`14 -- The World Health Organization says the spread of polio is an international public health emergency that threatens to infect other countries with the crippling disease.
In an announcement Monday, the agency described the ongoing polio outbreaks in Asia, Africa and the Middle East as an "extraordinary" situation requiring a coordinated international response.

Polio usually strikes children under five and is usually spread via infected water. There is no specific treatment or cure, but several vaccines exist.

Experts are particularly concerned the virus continues to pop up in countries previously free of the disease, such as Syria, Somalia and Iraq - where civil war or unrest complicates efforts to contain the virus.

Some critics say the rapid spread of polio could unravel the nearly three-decade effort to eradicate it.

News from The Associated Press
 
I KNEW I posted my news on this in the wrong thread - MERs! Darn.

How many here know who Jonas Salk was?
 

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