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from the so-close-to-total-eradication dept.
It's Official: Africa Has Just Been Declared Free of Wild Poliovirus:
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday declared that Africa was free of wild poliovirus , a landmark in a decades-long campaign to eradicate the notorious disease around the world.
"Today is a historic day for Africa," said Professor Rose Gana Fomban Leke, whose commission certified that no polio cases had occurred on the continent for the past four years, the threshold for eradication.
Poliovirus now joins smallpox on the list of viruses that have been wiped out in Africa, the WHO said.
[...] Poliomyelitis - the medical term for polio - is an acutely infectious and contagious virus which attacks the spinal cord and causes irreversible paralysis in children.
It was endemic around the world until a vaccine was found in the 1950s, though this remained out of reach for many poorer countries in Asia and Africa.
In 1988, when the WHO, UNICEF and Rotary launched the worldwide campaign to eradicate the disease, there were 350,000 cases
[...] Thanks to a global effort and financial backing - some US$19 billion over 30 years - only Afghanistan and Pakistan have recorded cases this year: 87 in total.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Bot on Tuesday September 01 2020, @08:22AM (1 child)
- bill
- wat
- one goose laying golden eggs died
- wat
- polio is ded in africa, we must have been too aggressive
- no no, we let it ded on purpose, needed something to look good after COVID response and that demographic cleanup in India...
- "demographic cleanup" i like the sound of it
- thx
- so, adieu polio
- goodbye polio
- hehe
- hehe
and they all lived happily ever after, except for polio
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @06:51PM
Do you ever post anything not terrible? Is that like a Catholic requirement or something?