POLIO STATISTICS FOR 2019A “High” we did not and Do Not want!!
As of 19 July 2019, the number of children confirmed paralyzed by wild poliovirus hit 56 cases with 45 in Pakistan and 11 in Afghanistan. Likely the total number will increase in the next few months as we enter the part of the year when more cases are seen and since there are still positive environmental samples being reported each week in both countries. The better news is that if Nigeria makes it through August 2019 without a case of wild poliovirus caused paralysis it will made the “magic 3 year mark” and Africa could, once again, be declared “Polio Free”.
In addition, so far this year there have been 26 confirmed cases of paralysis caused by circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus; some in countries who had c-VDPV cases in 2018, some in countries that didn’t have c-VDPV cases in 2018 (1 case each in China and Myanmar this year and 4 cases in the Central Africa Republic), but none this year in Papua New Guinea (26 cases in 2018) or in Syria which had an outbreak in 2017.
Issues, including many that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has dealt with before in other countries such as India, are being addressed. This dramatically points out that we cannot let our guard down or stop our efforts. It has been predicted that if we stopped all polio immunizations globally within 10 years there would be approximately 200,000 cases annually---we must not and cannot allow this to happen! World Polio Day on Thursday October 24 would be a good time to hold an event to educate and inspire Rotarians and our communities to End Polio Now!!