"Tajikistan outbreak sets back effort to end polio; WHO calls situation grave as virus spreads" by Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | August 5, 2010
Polio has reappeared in a corner of the world that had not seen cases in years — Tajikistan, the former Soviet republic — a chilling setback in the two-decade campaign to purge a dreaded cause of childhood paralysis from the planet....
The emergence of so many cases so swiftly has alarmed health agencies that have spent more than $7 billion since 1988 in the quest to vanquish polio as they had smallpox.
So who makes the polio vaccine$?
The World Health Organization, which presides over the global campaign to eliminate polio, regards the outbreak as a grave situation, spokesman Daniel Epstein said.
“Our assessment is, the risk for further international spread of polio is high,’’ Epstein said.
Sounds like swine flu all over again.
For much of the past decade, it appeared polio’s last stand would be in Africa and South Asia, which have borne the brunt of the viral disease in recent years. As recently as 2007, polio was restricted to just four nations. The roughly 600 cases so far this year are scattered across 16 countries.
You know, no offense but THOUSANDS were FELLED by REGULAR FLU last year.
What is with the BOOGA--BOOGA FEAR BULLS***, MSM?
Aren't there OTHER DISEASES (like cancers from pollution and war-making) that kill and sicken a lot more, WHO?
WTF are you doing?
Its arrival in Tajikistan and Russia, part of a region declared polio-free in 2002, illustrates the easy spread of germs in an era of global travel and the challenge of maintaining vigilance in impoverished regions....
And now I sense the New World Order agenda entering the mix.
Just one more reason to oppose globalism.
Dr. Gerald Keusch, a professor of international health at Boston University School of Public Health: “It’s a situation that needs both a global commitment and a national commitment.’’
The fuse was lit in Tajikistan early this year, with telltale nausea, fever, and paralysis appearing in patients living in the southwestern part of the nation, a desperately poor region even by the standards of a country with few resources.
The significance of those cases was not immediately recognized. Testing was delayed. And there was evidence that estimated levels of immunization may have been exaggerated.
“It’s an unfortunate lesson of what we’ve been saying all along,’’ said Dr. Steven Wassilak, an epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who traveled to Tajikistan to help contain the outbreak. “Vigilance is important. Strong surveillance systems with rapid testing of specimens is a way to pick up something like this quickly. We know it’s a very mobile world....’’
Disease detectives discovered that the strain of polio that arrived in Tajikistan was genetically identical to a germ circulating in northern India.
What a cute term, huh?
Disease detectives; sounds like a CSI series on Tuesday nights.
Tajiks regularly decamp to neighboring nations to find work, but the source of the outbreak remains a mystery....
I'm feeling delirious and it isn't from illness; it's from the deja-vu feeling I am getting.
Four major immunization drives have been conducted since the polio cases were identified, reaching 97 percent of children and adolescents. Surrounding nations also embarked on major pushes to immunize youngsters.
And which company got the contract$ to make the stuff?
The pace of new infections has slowed considerably since vaccinations began, disease investigators said, but they cautioned that it is too soon to declare an end to the outbreak.
No, there is a lot more vaccine that need$ to be made so it can be destroyed later.
The virus, which proliferates in the intestines of the infected, spreads easily, most often when good hygiene is not practiced after using the restroom.
Are the trying to say the Tajiks are slobs that are playing in their own feces?
Is that the cover-story crap they are putting out?
And because most people who are infected do not have symptoms, it can spread silently and broadly....
Must not be that serious; Globe gave it the World lead and then forgot about it today.
Must be too many wars that need promoting.
