Health workers in Africa administering polio vaccine

Smart Development

Gli eroi della polio

Dec 17, 2015 Bill Gates

SEATTLE – I progressi compiuti dal mondo sul fronte della lotta alla poliomielite potrebbero essere uno dei segreti meglio custoditi sulla salute a livello globale. I miei eroi per il 2015 sono gli uomini e le donne che lottano in prima linea contro questa malattia.

Dal 1988 il numero di casi annui di polio in tutto il mondo è sceso di oltre il 99,9%. Secondo le stime, la malattia un tempo causava la paralisi di 350.000 bambini l’anno; nel 2015 il numero dei casi sarà probabilmente inferiore a 100.

Inoltre, l’anno 2015 ha segnato un’altra pietra miliare nella nostra missione di debellare questa piaga debilitante: per la prima volta nella storia umana l’Africa ha registrato un anno senza alcun caso di polio selvaggia.

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Talal Serhan Dec 29, 2015

When i look back and compare myself, when i was a child, to my children, i see a big difference in our healths. I can hardly remember being sick, but this was not the case with my children.
Literally, every month i used take most of them to the clinic. And i 'm not alone in this, but it is the general case all around me.
We eat the same food and enjoy nearly the same standards of living. The only difference is that the new generation, in order to live, has to rely on medications?!!
So, i really got worried when you wrote "Now we have to finish the job".
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j. von Hettlingen Dec 21, 2015

Bill Gates expresses his thanks to and admiration for his "polio heroes," some of whom in Afghanistan and Pakistan had risked their lives in their efforts to vaccinate children. That these two countries are the only ones "that have never been polio-free," has much to do with geopolitics. The mistrust can be explained by a fake vaccination programme organised by the CIA a few years ago. American intelligence believed Osama bin Laden was hiding with his family in Pakistan's town of Abbottabad. Under the pretext of vaccinating the children there, CIA agents obtained DNA from his family. The data was used after the May 2011 raid, to determine whether the killed suspect was Osama bin Laden himself. Since then the Taliban and other Islamist fighters treat anti-polio drops with suspicion, thinking the oral-drop vaccine were part of a western plot to sterilise Muslim children. They saw vaccination workers as potential cover for spies, who deserved to be killed. Militant commanders in Pakistan's North and South Waziristan banned vaccination activities in retaliation for the CIA drone strikes against them. Sometimes they used children as bargaining chips in their efforts to end drone strikes.
Gates writes: "Since 1988, the number of annual cases of polio worldwide has dropped more than 99.9%. The disease used to paralyze an estimated 350,000 children every year; in 2015, the number of cases is likely to be fewer than 100." In 2014 Nigeria was not polio-free. Thanks to his two recipients there, the country seems to have eradicated the disease. India once had the highest number of polio cases in the world. Poor sanitation in densely populated areas and large numbers of people living in extreme poverty are the main cause of polio. However the close collaboration between the Indian government and NGOs had been vital to help eliminate the disease. More importantly India had used sophisticated positioning technology to map the movements of the mobile and migrant population to successfully reach children consistently missed by previous vaccination campaigns.
The two polio-affected countries - Afghanistan and Pakistan - could learn from India, by involving religious and community leaders to reach out to parents in remote areas and to persuade them to accept the vaccine. In July, 2012 the Islamic Research Academy of Al-Azhar issued a statement urging parents around the world to continue vaccinating their children and avoid listening to rumours and false calls that ban polio vaccination. Following this opinion, local imams in mosques actively encouragd congregations to immunise their children, defying the militants, who still reject the vaccination programme.
The courageous vaccination workers in Pakistan deserve to be honoured and the Heroes of Polio Eradication (HOPE) Awards under the auspices of the United Arab Emirates may convince hardliners among the Islamist militants that the future of their children could be at risk, if denied of their polio vaccine.
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Marc Laventurier Dec 18, 2015

The prime 'Polio Hero' was of course Jonas Salk.
- Diego Orlandi Dec 21, 2015
  
  There is one good man.
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Kurt Sipolski Dec 18, 2015

As a polio survivor and author, I think Mr. Gates' goal of eradication is very possible, and would not have been 'very possible' without his dedication towards awareness and the encouragement of other participants. Unborn children will thank him.
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