NEWS: Polio Epidemic Hits Yemen

The World Health Organization announced Friday that 22 children in Yemen have become infected with the polio virus, a disease that can cause irreversible paralysis or even death. Yemen joins 14 other countries where polio has reappeared after it was thought to have been erradicated. The recent outbreaks are a disappointment to the WHO which had wanted to completely erradicate the disease worldwide.



Polio is a terrible disease, I hope that this will be contained in time before it infects massive numbers of people. Luckly, it was eradicated in the U.S. and Europe long ago.

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And they were so close to get rid of this virus once and for all. Now it is out of control again. This outbreak is caused by stupidity. They had the chance to kill this virus but somebody wouldn´t let them do it. Crazy...

I don't know if it's even possible to wipe out a disease completely.

Wouldn't it stand to reason that if it arose at some point, from either other material, or natural conditions, that it could rise again?

I'm sure we'd all sleep a lot more soundly having bested nature at this one test...

I'm just not sure it's a realistic aspiration to conquer the natural order.

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WyrdeOne,

It has been done worldwide with small pox.

that now exists only in a few government labs around the globe.

It was done for polio in this nation.

Yellow fever and malaria were wiped out in Panama so the Panama canal could be built, and that was back in 1907. (took about 18 months to do)

You would of course need to have people in power supporting humanity over profits. That is the problem, the political will is not there.
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My buddies grandma has polio got it when she was 14 and was paralyzed from the armpits down ever since. Didn't stop her from starting a family though.

slank
So far there have been no outside occurences of smallpox, but saying it has been eradicated infers that medical professionals have sampled every piece of organic matter on the planet and found no traces of the disease.

I understand functionally destroying something is just as good, but I wouldn't get behind any claims such as that without knowing the basis for the judgement.

Are all people in the world free of smallpox? How would we even know? There are hundreds of communities worldwide that have little to no outside contact.

Are all animals in the world free of smallpox? How would we know that either? There's no feasible way to test every creature on earth.

Depending on what sorts of forms the disease takes, where it hibernates, how it's transmitted, there could very well be strains of smallpox quietly mutating in dozens of locations around the globe.

What if some indigenous tribe or another became immune to its effects after a while, but still carry it? What if it arose from an animal carrier immune to symptoms?

I dunno, I don't think it's reasonable to say it's been wiped off the face of the earth.

Eradicated from industrialized nations would be a more conservative statement, with a higher degree of certainty.