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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 12 2015, @01:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-look-what-fdr-did-with-polio dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes:

The New York Times reports some good news from the health front: it's been a year since anybody was diagnosed with polio in Africa.

The goal had seemed tantalizingly close in recent years, but polio always managed to roar back, particularly in Nigeria. Then officials embraced a vigorous new approach to vaccination and surveillance in that country, hiring thousands of community "mobilizers" to track down the unvaccinated, opening operations centers nationwide to track progress and seeking out support from clerics and tribal chiefs.

The result has been remarkable.

The last African case of polio was detected in Somalia on Aug. 11, 2014, the final sign of an outbreak with its roots in Nigeria — the one country where the virus had never been eradicated, even temporarily. But the last case in Nigeria was recorded on July 24, 2014.

According to Wikipedia, there were 416 cases worldwide in 2013, down from 350,000 in 1988. Since the polio virus only infects humans, this means that total eradication of the disease is now within reach.

The bad news is, polio still exists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we have the CIA and the Taliban to thank for that. In 2011, while looking for Osama bin Laden, the CIA used an immunization campaign as a cover. When this news came out, it reinforced an already widespread belief that vaccines are a Western conspiracy to sterilize Moslems. This means that a lot of people in the region are now either avoiding immunization, or shooting at health workers.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:54PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:54PM (#221705)

    The Taliban have been distrustful of ANY signs of western intervention for some time, including immunization. There have been rumors for a long time that the immunization campaign has secret ulterior motives. It's always been hard for immunization workers. That fact is on the Taliban.

    The CIA's using an immunization campaign as cover has given a specific reason for the Taliban's mistrust - any elements that might have doubted that the vaccination campaign was a secret western front have been put to rest. That fact is on the CIA.

    Analogy. Let's say there was hard evidence that one vaccine that was actually used (for example, a new vaccine in a clinical trial) had in fact been linked to increased autism risk in children. And there was hard evidence the CDC had covered up that finding.

    The anti-vax movement would suddenly become a massively more powerful political force. The people who mistrusted the CDC all along for bad reasons would now have a GOOD reason to distrust them. "See, we were right all along!" Vaccination requirement laws would likely start coming down all over the country. It wouldn't really matter that the vaccine in question was experimental, or if the autism link had nothing to do with mercury or any of the other theoretical reasons why the anti-vax crowd believe vaccinations could cause autism.

    The CDC's bad actions don't change the fact that the anti-vax'ers long-held position is out of step with mainstream medicine. The anti-vax movement doesn't suddenly spring from the bad CDC actions. One reinforces the other. Both are a problem.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2015, @04:45PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @04:45PM (#221752)

    The Taliban have been distrustful of ANY signs of western intervention for some time, including immunization.

    Completely understandably, I might add, because so far most times western powers have been involved in anything in Afghanistan, a lot of people end up dead. The most recent round is no exception to this rule.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.