The progress towards eradication of poliovirus globally is one of the greatest success stories of the global health community. When the Global Polio Eradication Initiative started in 1988, polio paralysed more than 1000 children worldwide every day. Since then the global incidence of wild poliovirus cases has decreased by 99.9%, …
The threat of a polio outbreak looms over west and central Africa. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), an international campaign, issued this warning following the confirmation of one new polio case in Guinea and two in Mali. The disease had been eradicated from both the countries five years ago. …
Star-studded campaigns, millions spent and 20 new cases of polio to show for it. The reason being offered by Uttar Pradesh (up) is lack of adequate routine immunisation. The affected districts are Badaun, Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar, Mau and Bulandshahar. While it is a fact that routine immunisation in the state is …
Has India been short-sighted in its approach towards stamping out polio? Is the World Health Organization (who) foisting a discriminatory polio eradication agenda on developing countries like India? Or is the pharmaceutical industry eyeing gains by pushing an alternative means to stave off the threat of the disease? Lingering doubts …
Every new case of polio in the country should henceforth be treated as a "public health emergency'. This suggestion was made by the India expert advisory group on polio, with a view to eradicating polio by the end of 2005. The decision was taking at the 10th meeting of the …
africa's Ivory Coast might become the eighth polio-free country to be re-infected with the virus, warned the World Health Organization (who). The fresh case of paralytic poliomyelitis reported here is suspected to be linked to the same virus that spread to seven polio-free countries from northern Nigeria. Prior to this, …
WILL that crippling scourge called polio be wiped out from the face of the earth by the end of this year? The World Health Organization (WHO) hopes so. But all its ambitions
an optimistic note, about wiping out polio from the six afflicted countries, was to be sounded at a conference organised by the World Health Organisation (who) in Geneva on January 15. Instead, the sudden re-emergence of the disease in two African nations
West Africa is hell-bent on eradicating polio. In a remarkable effort, via "synchronized' national immunization day (nid) programmes from October 19 to 26, thousands of volunteers and health workers fanned out to administer the oral polio vaccine to 15 million children in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo, and …
The origin of human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) has generated considerable interest and controversy amongst scientists the world over. Flaming this interest is the theory put forth by Edward Hooper, a British journalist based in Africa, who in his book, The River, proposed that the origin of the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome …
India is the shining star in the global battle to eradicate smallpox. It is also a branded villain as far as polio is concerned. How is it that we managed so well against a disease more virulent than polio? Why does Uttar Pradesh today contribute to about 88 per cent …
The polio virus (pv) is possibly the most innocuous virus that affects humans. The improvement of sanitation standards across the world has meant fewer people are afflicted by polio as infants, upsetting the historical balance between virus and host. But, since poorer sections still live in squalor and consume water …
at a time when the Pulse polio immunisation drive is in full swing, rumours are rife about the presence of polio virus in some goats in Gumbli village in Tamil Nadu's Thiruvellur district. Experts fear this can affect the already floundering national polio eradication programme. According to news reports, around …
the recent upsurge of polio in Uttar Pradesh has once again accentuated the failure of its eradication programme in the country. Out of 370 new cases detected this year, 313 have occurred in up alone. Experts say that the situation is worse this year as compared to 2001. While 28 …
using genetic code as the recipe and carbon-containing chemicals as the ingredients, researchers have recently recreated the polio virus. The feat is significant, as it is for the first time that a working biological entity has been synthesised. Moreover, the achievement is a step towards creating life in laboratories
europe has been declared polio-free. For some 870 million people living in the region's 51 member states, this declaration is an important public health milestone in the new millennium. The European Regional Commission for the Certification of the Eradication of Poliomyelitis confirmed that the disease had been eradicated in the …
rainwater harvesting can also cleanse water. Storage of treated wastewater and storm runoff in underground aquifers purges it of disease-causing organisms. This allows the water to be recycled for irrigating parks, gardens, ovals and farms. This was revealed in a study recently conducted by Australia-based Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research …
a dose of oral polio vaccine (opv) can relapse and turn into the deadly disease-causing virus, reveals a recent study conducted by researchers from Atlanta-based Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc). The researchers studied a 1999 polio outbreak in Hispaniola, a Caribbean island. The outbreak had killed two children …
seeing is believing. This idiom seems to be very significant in the light of recent revelations on numerous children dying because of World Health Organisation's (who) blind acceptance of wrong information. Researchers from who and United Nations Children's Fund (unicef) recently analysed vaccination data for the past 20 years and …
a new refrigerator run on solar power, developed by Hyderabad-based public sector giant Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (bhel), could go along way in eradicating polio in remote areas of the world besides helping in other vaccine programmes. Vaccines are transported and stored from the place of manufacture up to the …
