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?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @09:44AM (2 children)
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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @10:23PM (1 child)
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
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @01:34PM (5 children)
People. Turns out anti-vaxer Rumors spreads fast
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/health/polio-pakistan-afghanistan.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @01:58PM (3 children)
Doesn't help that the CIA did actually use the vaccine team as cover for DNA testing to track terrorists.
Seriously, CIA, Osama was a small fry compared to Polio.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday September 01 2020, @02:25PM (2 children)
And that's not just vaguery. It really made things worse. That event was specifically the launching point of anti-vax hysteria in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It led Islamist aligned militias to threaten the lives of anyone who got vaccines, which meant that even people who might not care about being tracked as a terrorist would still stay home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @06:20PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday September 01 2020, @10:28PM
Good article about it here [nationalgeographic.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:28PM
I'm going to enjoy putting you medical tyrants up against the wall. Bootlicking cowards.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @07:41PM
now only vaccine caused polio exists in africa. guess you frauds will have to make a vaccine for that too?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @11:50PM (1 child)
Because Africans gotta get infected with something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:32AM
GRIDS is still a thing.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:04AM
A whole continent where the gods must be gay.