Polio News and Research

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Poliomyelitis (polio) is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus that invades the nervous system and can cause severe paralysis. The virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine. Initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck, and pain in the limbs. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among those paralyzed, 5-10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized. Polio mainly affects children under five years of age. Naturally occurring polio was eliminated in the U.S. in 1979 and in the Western Hemisphere by 1991; however, worldwide efforts are continuing towards eradication of this contagious and devastating disease.

UAE Exchange Shamshabad branch actively participated in Pulse Polio immunization program

"Children's Health, The Nation's Wealth" is the motto that all the staff of UAE Exchange Shamshabad branch held close to their heart. The second phase of the Pulse Polio Immunization program, was held across India on February 24th.

5 Mar 2013

Community-led engagement, greater access needed to end polio

"While the challenges we face in the last polio reservoirs are difficult, they are not intractable," Bekele Geleta, secretary general of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, writes in an AlertNet opinion piece.

2 Mar 2013

Sustained funding necessary for success of global polio eradication plan

"We are teaming up to tackle one of the most ambitious public health goals ever set: eradicating polio, a disease that has haunted humanity at least since ancient Egypt," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P., and Bill Gates, chair of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, write in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

2 Mar 2013

India needs political leadership, resources to ensure children's right to health

"India is making positive strides in reducing child mortality through new policies and ambitious programs, but preventing the deaths of millions of children remains one of the country's greatest challenges," health expert and blogger John Butler writes in the Wall Street Journals "India Real Time" blog, noting, "Roughly 1.7 million children under five years old die every year in India, says UNICEF, representing more than a fifth of all child deaths worldwide."

2 Mar 2013

WHO officials, Islamic leaders to meet in Egypt to discuss attacks on polio workers

"Top World Health Organization officials and Islamic leaders will meet in Egypt next week in an effort to stop attacks on polio workers, which are hampering the eradication of the virus in some countries with large Muslim populations," Reuters reports, noting, "Gunmen in Pakistan and Nigeria have killed more than 20 health workers in the past three months in a series of attacks linked to a backlash against the immunization program against the crippling virus."

2 Mar 2013

New York City Mayor Bloomberg pledges $100M to global polio eradication initiative

"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged $100 million to help the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others to fight polio around the world," the Associated Press reports.

1 Mar 2013

CSIS report examines Global Health Policy in Second Obama Term

"I am pleased to share with you a new report and video series from the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, 'Global Health Policy in the Second Obama Term,'" J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) and director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, writes in a letter posted on the center's "Smart Global Health" blog.

28 Feb 2013

Police escort of polio workers killed in northern Pakistan

"Health workers administering polio vaccinations to children came under attack in northern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing their police escort, authorities said," CNN reports.

27 Feb 2013

Polio eradication strategy must be adjusted for local contexts

"It has been a particularly busy couple of months for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI)," SciDev.Net Director Nick Ishmael Perkins writes in a SciDev.Net editorial. "The deadly attacks on vaccinators in Pakistan brought renewed global attention to the campaign, and then Bill Gates went public with his personal commitment to end polio," he states, adding, "The GPEI has responded with a strategy for what it calls the 'endgame.'"

26 Feb 2013

Oral polio vaccine cold chain disruption in Pakistan could compromise immunization effectiveness, health officials warn

Health officials in Pakistan have formally complained to the WHO concerning the quality of oral polio vaccine (OPV) doses distributed by the U.N. body," SciDev.Net reports, noting 58 children became infected with polio in 2012 despite having received the vaccine.

22 Feb 2013

Working toward polio eradication in 2018

"Since the eradication of smallpox in the late 1970s, no other diseases have followed suit; the goal that has come closest so far is eradication of polio," a Lancet Infectious Diseases editorial states, noting that in 2012 only about 250 people were infected with polio worldwide.

20 Feb 2013

Scientists create new strain of polio to protect vaccine factory workers

"Scientists have created new strains of polio intended to protect workers in factories that make polio vaccine," the New York Times reports.

20 Feb 2013

New issue of Global Health Diplomacy Network's 'Health Diplomacy Monitor' available online

Volume 4, Issue 1 of the Global Health Diplomacy Network's "Health Diplomacy Monitor" is now available online.

20 Feb 2013

Vaccine prices and availability: an interview with Kate Elder, Vaccines Policy Advisor for Médecins Sans Frontières's Access Campaign

One of the key reasons why children are missed by immunization programs, particularly in developing countries where Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) works, is that the products that we currently have in their present formulation are not well-suited to the places that have the most un-immunized children. These are the most challenging contexts to work in.

19 Feb 2013

New lab at Diamond to help scientists delve into inner workings of pathogens

The UK's national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, is now the first and only place in Europe where pathogens requiring Containment Level 3 - including serious viruses such as those responsible for AIDS, Hepatitis and some types of flu - can be analysed at atomic and molecular level using synchrotron light.

18 Feb 2013

Opinion pieces address violence against women

Several opinion pieces have been published in recognition of One Billion Rising, a global campaign calling for an end to violence against women and gender equality.

15 Feb 2013

More polio workers killed than reported cases of disease, NPR reports

"The global effort to eradicate polio has reached a bizarre stage: More people have been gunned down recently over the disease than actually infected with it," NPR's "Shots" blog reports.

14 Feb 2013

Blogs examine root causes, implications of myths about polio vaccination

Citing a review by Telegraph correspondent Rob Crilly criticizing the film Zero Dark Thirty "for getting its facts wrong about the CIA vaccination campaign that sought to confirm the DNA of Osama bin Laden's children," development blogger Tom Murphy writes in the Humanosphere blog, "Crilly's larger point is to say that the film gives further ammo to polio vaccine conspiracy theorists."

14 Feb 2013

Learning from India's success in eradicating polio

In a post in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog, Shelley Thakral, senior communications officer for the foundation's India Country Office, interviews Orin Levine, director of vaccine delivery at the foundation, about his recent trip to India "to observe the experience of Bihar, a state in Northern India, where the polio effort is now being leveraged to strengthen routine immunization in ways that are really exciting."

13 Feb 2013

U.N. Secretary General condemns violence against health workers in Nigeria

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday "strongly condemned the killing in north-eastern Nigeria of three doctors from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, calling the attack and other recent incidents of violence against health workers 'unacceptable,'" the U.N. News Centre reports.

13 Feb 2013