2023-09-22 13:44:59
Global efforts to eradicate polio are likely to miss two of their main goals this year in their efforts to eradicate the virus, an independent strategic review has found.
The target in 2023 was to stop wild polio infections in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the disease remains endemic, as well as to stop transmission of a strain of the virus known as “vaccine-derived” polio, which is causing outbreaks elsewhere.
For its part, the Independent Monitoring Board, a group of experts on polio that oversees the work of the UN-backed Global Polio Eradication Initiative, said: “Neither goal will be achieved this year.”
The initiative agreed with the report regarding both goals, citing insecurity in key locations as one of the remaining challenges
It stressed in a statement in response to the review that eliminating outbreaks of the vaccine-derived virus is likely to take the most time.
Eliminate polio
Eradication of polio, a viral disease that can cause paralysis, has been a major global health goal for decades.
The number of polio cases has decreased by more than 99% since 1988 following mass vaccination campaigns, but it has become clear that making polio the second infectious disease to be completely eradicated following smallpox in 1980 is more difficult.
Polio is a highly contagious disease. The virus invades the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis. The disease most often affects children under the age of five, but anyone who has not been vaccinated can get it.
In a previous interview with Al-Arabi, the head of the Paralysis Control Committee in Jordan, Najwa Khoury, explained that this virus is usually transmitted from one individual to another, or a person becomes infected with it as a result of environmental pollution, noting that the virus causes damage to some of the cells that control On movement in the spinal cord.
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