Public health efforts eradicated smallpox from the globe in the late 1970s. The last naturally occurring case was in Somalia in 1977 (followed by a couple of lab accident cases in 1978). Public health’s sites have been set on Polio eradication for the last couple of decades. We got close a couple of times, but a series of naturally occurring and man-made setbacks slowed progress.
A couple of billion kids around the globe have been vaccinated against polio in the last decades – resulting in a 99% decrease in global polio cases. The world was on the verge of eliminating polio in the 2000’s, but political strife and other issues in West Africa turned the tide and set the eradication clock back. The good news is that the world is making progress again. The list of countries where polio cases is shrinking, as are the number of cases. Parts of Nigeria, India, Tajikistan, and parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan account for more than 75% of global cases. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been adding support to the new push to eradicate by working with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The goal is to eradicate polio by 2015.
Polio is more challenging to eradicate than smallpox was because it’s spread through what public health calls the “fecal-oral” route (i.e. sewage) rather than person to person, which means that public health needs to use mass vaccination efforts in areas with cases rather than the more focused (and less labor intensive) “ring vaccination” approach used to eradicate smallpox.
How is it not obvious…that those with great wealth and influence should be using some directly effective measures; using those Billions to eliminate the problematic sewage, abject poverty, food shortages & malnutrition, squalid living conditions, insuficient & contaminated water supplies, absence of hygienic knowledge & standards…instead of inoculating chronically malnourished & sick babies children & people with viruses, bacteria, and a myriad of neurotoxic and health-depreciating ingredients, genetically modified human & animal DNA, disruptive aditives and other foul biologic & synthetic substances.
The established evidence is being ignored. This “global push” is obviously not about the health of these populations…else their basic health needs would be valid issues to address, and some effort would be made – with all those Billions of dollars – to meet them.
http://jacob.puliyel.com/download.php?id=132
AND
http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2011/11/17/smoke-mirrors-and-the-disappearance-of-polio/