Congo Republic Declares a Polio Emergency

[HuckleB]

Source: New York Times

An explosive outbreak of polio is taking place in the Congo Republic, with 201 cases of paralysis found in two weeks and 104 deaths, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The government in Brazzaville, the nation’s capital, has declared an emergency and announced plans to vaccinate the entire population with oral drops three times with help from the W.H.O., Unicef and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Pointe Noire, the port city where most of the cases are concentrated, “We’ve got two hospitals with hundreds of paralyzed people and many dead,” Dr. Bruce Aylward, the W.H.O.’s director of global polio eradication, said in an interview from Geneva. “And a couple of things about this outbreak are different and deeply disturbing.”

Polio normally strikes young boys and girls equally, killing no more than 20 percent of those it paralyzes; death ensues when paralysis moves up the spine to the nerves that control the breathing muscles. In Pointe Noire, 85 percent of the cases are in teenagers and adults, most victims are male, and the death rate is much higher.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/world/africa/10polio.html

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Ugh. :cry:

[jaxx]

1. I thought it had been wiped out.

This is really bad news.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Almost, been reemerging in the developing world

smallpox has... POLIO, this close.

[dipsydoodle]

18. I knew that couldn't be the case.

Our free tetanus jabs here in the UK are combined now with a polio vac.

[jwirr]

2. I take it that they have not been vaccinated in this country? I am old

enough to remember the outbreaks here. Scary mostly because one never knows who is next.

[HuckleB]

3. The article discusses the history of vaccination there.

Many adults have not been vaccinated, it appears. Further, war has left many other unvaccinated.

[valerief]

4. Does Rumsfeld own a piece of polio vaccine, too? nt

[HuckleB]

5. .

:shrug:

[Confusious]

10. And that means?

The polio vaccine was created by Jonas Salk. He created it, saved millions of childrens lives, and in return, asked for nothing. He didn't even take a patent on his vaccine.

A long time before rumsfeld.

Or are you equating vaccines with those people?

[valerief]

14. Rummy, Cipro.

http://web.linkny.com/~civitas/page339.html

[Confusious]

17. Again, that means?

The polio vaccine was created by Jonas Salk. He created it, saved millions of childrens lives, and in return, asked for nothing. He didn't even take a patent on his vaccine.

A long time before rumsfeld.

Are you equating vaccines with those people?

[valerief]

19. I can't explain humor. Look up Rummy's interest in Cipro. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. You realize Rummy was a ten

when the SALK Vaccine was developed...

Not everything is a conspiracy. (And we do not go after the real ones... see Neocons and Iraq war)

[valerief]

15. Rummy, Cipro.

http://web.linkny.com/~civitas/page339.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. And? Anti viral 1990s

Salk Vaccine 1950's... Care to look at the calendar?

[XemaSab]

6. I don't understand

how it's 2010 and that disease still exists.

Why did we not wipe it off the earth 50 years ago?

It's a massive, massive moral failure. :(

[HuckleB]

8. Indeed. -eom-

[Confusious]

9. the only place that it existed for a time was the backwaters of india

WHO and the CDC tried like hell to wipe it out.

But the backwater Indians ( I say backwater as a location, not pejorative ) wouldn't take vaccinations, because they thought it was a "plot" by the western nations to take their manhood or sperm or some shit like that. Now that we have the woo contingent in the world, who think they can ward it off by throwing chicken bones, it'll be coming back.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Don't forget the paranoid Muslim clerics in Nigeria

Friday, 16 January, 2004

The global campaign to eradicate polio by 2005 is being threatened by the resurgence of the disease in the far north of Nigeria.

Despite this, an immunisation programme has been put on hold because of claims by Muslim clerics that the vaccine is being deliberately contaminated as part of a western plot.

Last August the northern Nigerian state of Kano suspended the campaign and set up a committee to investigate the claims.

In the predominantly Muslim region where anti-American sentiments often run high, the idea that the polio vaccine is part of a US plot to render women in the developing world infertile quickly took hold.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3400651.stm

[Poll_Blind]

20. This world exists in 2015, 2010,1974,1953,1922, 1850- alll at the same time.n/t

PB

[Evasporque]

7. Good thing Bush and Republicans cut back on aids funding...

Polio vaccines and other basic medical vaccines go along with prevention and treatment of HIV...

But it was more important to teach abstinence.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. OOPPS who forgot to hold a national vaccination campaign?