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As followers of zerospinzone.blogspot.com know from previous posts, I'm enthralled by the goal of not just treating or curing diseases, but eradicating them entirely.
Among human diseases, smallpox was the first to be wiped away, with the last case of a natural infection by this once devastating scourge occurring in October, 1977.
Polio, a paralyzing and sometimes fatal disease that struck down more than 500,000 people per year, most of them children, as recently as the 1940s and '50s, will hopefully be the next to go. Starting with the development of the Salk inactivated virus vaccine in the early 1950s and the Sabin attenuated virus oral vaccine in the early 1960s, polio has been eradicated in country after country, continent after continent, through massive, sustained, costly and often extremely difficult public-health efforts.
This enormous international effort has been incredibly successful. So far this year, only three cases of polio have been diagnosed worldwide, all in war-torn Afghanistan. In other words, the wild polio virus that once circulated freely throughout the world, has now been caged and almost completely destroyed, and now may hang on in just one small corner of one country.
It will still take intense surveillance and continued mass vaccination programs to strike the final blow against this deadly disease and ensure that it can not flare up anywhere every again.
But the world is so very close. What an accomplishment it will be.
REA
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Among human diseases, smallpox was the first to be wiped away, with the last case of a natural infection by this once devastating scourge occurring in October, 1977.
Polio, a paralyzing and sometimes fatal disease that struck down more than 500,000 people per year, most of them children, as recently as the 1940s and '50s, will hopefully be the next to go. Starting with the development of the Salk inactivated virus vaccine in the early 1950s and the Sabin attenuated virus oral vaccine in the early 1960s, polio has been eradicated in country after country, continent after continent, through massive, sustained, costly and often extremely difficult public-health efforts.
An infant receives the oral polio vaccine at a mobile clinic in Afghanistan, February 15, 2017
Credit: World Health Organization (WHO)/ S.Ramo
This enormous international effort has been incredibly successful. So far this year, only three cases of polio have been diagnosed worldwide, all in war-torn Afghanistan. In other words, the wild polio virus that once circulated freely throughout the world, has now been caged and almost completely destroyed, and now may hang on in just one small corner of one country.
It will still take intense surveillance and continued mass vaccination programs to strike the final blow against this deadly disease and ensure that it can not flare up anywhere every again.
But the world is so very close. What an accomplishment it will be.
REA
------
If you liked this post, please sign up to follow or receive email alerts from zerospinzone.blogspot.com
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