Contracting polio has never been a big fear in my life. Honestly, I didn’t really know anything about this disease until a character in a tv show I watch (set in the 50s in London) became deathly ill with polio. The reason for my ignorance can be traced to the fact that polio has been eradicated from the United States, according to the CDC. But how did the US eradicate this disease in the first place? Also, what are we doing to eradicate it in other countries?
According to our textbook, polio was primarily eliminated in the US due to the use of oral polio vaccine, or OPV. This vaccine is an attenuated vaccine that prevents the disease from being spread, and thus provides herd immunity, by creating a strong mucosal immunity. According to the CDC, this vaccine is administered in oral drops to children. “But wait,” some of you may be thinking, “I don’t remember ever taking little drops of a vaccine!” Well, that is probably because you didn’t. Essentially, we used the herd immunity provided by the OPV to get rid of Polio in the US years ago, but then switched to a different vaccine that is less capable of harmful mutations than the OPV. This new vaccine is called an inactivated poliovaccine, or IPV. According to the CDC, we began using it in the US in 1987, and started using it exclusively in 2000. The main reason we hadn’t used this vaccine before is that it doesn’t provide as good of herd immunity as the OPV, but in a country where polio has been eradicated, that is not a problem.
Unfortunately, polio has not been eradicated from other countries, and thus, they must continue to administer OPV to try to get rid of the virus. According to the World Health Organization, Pakistan, along with Afghanistan, is one of the two remaining countries with cases of polio. Indeed, Pakistan had 144 cases of polio last year, which was a huge increase from the 12 cases in 2018. I believe that this is a huge problem that our government and the world in general ought to be doing something about. We have the tools to get rid of this disease, and we ought to make it a priority to do so.
It seems like there are a lot of people who agree with me in this. From a UN news article, I was informed that UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently traveled to Pakistan to show his support for a Pakistani government initiative to eliminate polio in their country forever. According to the news article, this initiative will try to impact around 39 million kids through methods such as door-to-door campaigns and vaccinations at transit points. I honestly think that this is a great picture of people around the world from different cultures and backgrounds working together to save lives. There are so many other problems out there that could be solved or reduced if we maintained this commitment to working together.
Microbes and Musings 