Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday September 01 2020, @05:16AM   Printer-friendly
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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @09:44AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @09:44AM (#1044864)

    A college friend grew up in China and had polio at about age 10 (early 1960s) after the vaccine was available in other parts of the world. One of his legs stopped growing and was surgically broken and stretched to make it the same length as the other leg...several times during adolescence. The recovery pain was horrible. He was not a regular drinker, but after the last stretching, he drank most of a pitcher of beer at the campus pub every evening so he could get to sleep (the pain meds he got were useless). How do I know? I had one or two glasses from those same pitchers, every night for several weeks.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @10:23PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @10:23PM (#1045130)

    So technically he was drinking a whole pitcher minus a glass or two.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:12AM (#1045244)

      Not "technically". He was actually drinking most of a pitcher, and he was not large, maybe 140 pounds. He drank pretty fast so he could get home before the drunkenness kicked in, and I assume also to get back to his apartment bathroom in time!

      After the leg stretching operation mostly healed up, he quit the beer. Don't remember him drinking much at all after that.