The Global Polio Eradication Campaign

Salgado, Sebastiao. The End of Polio: A Global Effort to End a Disease. Illustrated edition Ed. New York: Bulfinch, 2003. Print.

I am disturbed that not all lives are valued equally. I cannot accept the fact that children die from preventable diseases, simply because they are born in countries with less wealth and stability. In America, we are curing cancer with a mutated poliovirus strain, but we haven’t eradicated polio in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We come together in crises, highly publicized earthquakes and tsunamis, but we haven’t come together to solve the problem of basic human health, a right for every person on earth. Ensuring our health is complicated and daunting and requires the mass coordination of agencies and governments to build sustainable infrastructures with local citizens in charge. I want to be part of the solution and am engaging in public health in every way I can: in the field, in the classroom, and through global health

Pakistan is now one of only three countries in the world where polio is endemic (UNICEF, 2014). 70% of polio cases reported in 2013 were from remote areas of FATA especially North Waziristan, where polio vaccination has been forbidden by the Taliban considering polio vaccination a foreign propaganda to adversely affect their children health (UNICEF, 2014). Despite these challenges Pakistan was the first country in South Asia to include pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV 10) in its Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) program with support from Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in 2013 (UNICEF, 2014). Though this demonstrated a positive step towards controlling pneumonia, a major contributor of child mortality. More political commitment and budgetary allocation to immunization campaigns is needed when looking at the measles outbreak of 2012 (UNICEF,

The CDC, Center for Disease Control, says that polio used to be very common in the United States Before the polio vaccine and that it infected thousands of people each year with this severe illness. This outbreak stopped with the invention of the polio vaccine in 1955. In this essay we will discuss what polio is, how effected our world, and how the vaccine stopped the outbreak.

Poliomyelitis or more commonly known as polio is a viral disease. The Polio virus can fly under the radar for a while, but later the effects may show. In many cases a person may have polio but it will never affect them. The name of the virus that causes polio is the "poliovirus" it spreads extremely easily in unsanitary areas due to human waste being in the water.

The Poliovirus, one of America’s most deadly epidemics in the US history. This deadly virus had wiped out millions of children from 1920-1950. Most of the Polio epidemics had happen during the summer. The first cause of Polio in the United States happen in Brooklyn, New York in 1916 when according to Heaven Emerson the public health commissioner said “90 italian immigrants under the age of 10 had moved to Brooklyn where the outbreak appeared, and that immigrants were the first to get it because they were dirtier and poorer.” From that summer in 1916, Polio had scared the entire population in New York. Parents were taking extreme measures to ensure their kid would not get Polio. Polio affected children the most. Children were put in quarantine,

In the 1950s, UNICEF spiraled into a set of mass campaigns of epidemic diseases such as tuberculosis, yaws, trachoma, leprosy and malaria; this decade was knows as the “Era of Mass Disease Campaign”. UNICEF worked to complement and help the World Health Organization, WHO. They worked with each disease independently depending on the incredibly high amount of cases of each illness in each region. With the help of immense advancements with technology and medicine within the last century, UNICEF was able to effectively treat thousands - even millions- of cases within each region. They’re campaigns were successful in decreasing the rates of infection and malnutrition

On August 8th 2014, following the Emergency Committee meeting convened under the International Health Regulations (IHR) to discuss the outbreak for the first time, we declared that the conditions for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) had been met. This was a full five months after the international community was alerted to the outbreak with a report of 86 cases and a case fatality ratio of 68.5% in Guinea. Repeated warnings and requests for assistance from the governments and the handful of international NGO’s who are handling the bulk of the cases have not been responded to appropriately whether in terms of resources or response times. As the lead health organization charged with responding to global health crises, we have been derelict in our support to these entities, the health systems of the countries affected and most critically to the people who have been infected by the virus.

Polio is virus infection that occurs in the throat and intestines through environmental contaminations such as water by stool and feces [7]. The virus in most cases occurs in children aged five and under and leads to the invasion of the nervous system which can cause irreversible paralysis [12]. In 1988 a proposal called Global Polio Eradication Initiative was put forward by the World Health Assembly to eradicate the disease which included partners such as “WHO, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UNICEF, and supported by key partners including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” [12]. Since this proposal, cases of polio have dropped from 350,000 yearly to a global low of 223 cases in 2012 [1, 7]. Since 2012 “only parts of three countries in the world remain endemic for the disease–the smallest geographic area in history” [12]. However, with only one percent of the world infected with polio, it reappeared in countries and cases increased by seventy percent [1]. Canadians should not take the matter lightly because the course of the disease can change quickly. In an interview

During the twentieth century Americans were afraid. They were afraid of the Russians, they were afraid of the economy, they were afraid of Hitler, and they were afraid of polio. A disease as indiscriminate as a nuclear bomb, it struck young and old, rich and poor, white and black. It caused fear and hysteria, confusion and anger, paralysis, and even death. By this time the United States had endured smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, and tuberculosis; but it had never experienced a wide-spread epidemic of a disease that seemed to specifically target children before the twentieth century. Although polio effects people of all ages, children are the most susceptible due to their weak immune systems. Many victims of polio were partially or completely paralyzed, and thousands died. The “summer plague” would run rampant in the United States for nearly four decades.

Polio had caused 350000 cases of infection in 1988 in over 125 countries and less than 2000 cases in just about four countries in 2009 and then 406 cases in 2013. This 99% drop of polio threat is the result of endless efforts of the World Health Organization, Unicef, Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, Bill and Melinda foundation, Rotary foundation as well as governments supporting the Global Polio Eradication Initiatives with immunization. Nevertheless, the remaining 1% is posing great problem eradicating presenting various political, social, economical and technical obstacles. A more direct consideration of especial challenges for specific countries and communities could put an end to polio threat around the world.

This purpose of this paper is to discuss about the emergence and eradication. Emergence of the polio includes the sign and symptoms, causes, spread of the disease, deaths due to the diseases, and countries affected by this disease. Eradication includes the treatment of the disease, WHO guidelines, invention of the vaccines, good sanitization, and immunization.

It is however pertinent to mention, that such vaccine preventable diseases such as polio are making a comeback which is recognizable by the actuating fact that more people today are refusing to be compliant with vaccination recommendations and requirements. The fewer people that receive vaccinations, the higher the chances of the virus spreading because of the opportunistic environment that it creates (Makielski, 2014). In as much as vaccinations have proven to be effective at reducing mortality rates in children, there is approximately 18.7 million children globally that are not getting the required vaccinations needed to eradicate and prevent the spreading of these diseases. Vaccines today are becoming victims of their success in countries where many people have never had to bear witness of these diseases’ devastating effects for which the vaccines are to prevent.

Polio is a viral infectious disease transmitted via the faecal-oral route. It is a dreaded disease especially in children, it results in infantile paralysis. Polio has no cure causing great concern due to significant morbidity and mortality. Despite global efforts to eradicate Polio, it is still endemic in parts of the world. This paper discusses the global problems posed by the disease, eradication strategies employed globally and regionally and the challenges in the way of achieving a world without Polio.

Peg Kehret, a victim of polio, was paralyzed from the neck down, but regained full movement of her limbs and learned to walk again within seven months. She was diagnosed with three different types of polio at the age of twelve (Kehret 27). Polio, a deadly disease, killed many until the vaccine was created in 1955 by Jonas Saulk. It is now eradicated in most countries, but still exists in Asia, India, sub-Saharan Africa, and multiple republics of the country previously known as the Soviet Union.