When the nations of the world pledged to eradicate poliomyelitis back in 1988, there were an estimated 350,000 cases in 125 endemic countries. Now billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates says we stand on the brink of eradicating the dread disease.
Gates told a lecture in London that ridding the world of polio would be "one of the great moral and practical achievements of our age, and could be accomplished within six years.
There were only 250 children paralyzed with polio last year, and it s endemic in just three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.
"Stopping these last cases of polio in these last countries, however, is among the most difficult tasks the world has ever assigned itself, Gates said.
A big part of the problem is that small settlements and villages were missing from vaccinators hand-drawn maps, or the distances were wrong, Gates wrote in his annual letter. Now vaccinators are being equipped with GPS-equipped cell phones.
Also, nine polio vaccinators in Pakistan were murdered last month. Suspicion of vaccinators in that country has increased since it was revealed the United States tried to use a hepatitis B vaccine campaign to collect blood samples from Osama bin Laden s family in 2011.
The world seemed to come close to eradicating polio back in 2003, but then rumors spread among the Islamic northern region of Nigeria that the vaccine caused sterility in girls, and there was a 10-month suspension of the immunization campaign that allowed the virus to resurge.
Dr. Bloom comments, too bad there isn t a vaccine against stupidity and ignorance.
