Polio
vaccination team in India. Image: WHO
Scientific American‘s editorial board strongly
believes that the US was wrong to mount a fake hepatitis B vaccination
campaign in the effort to kill Osama bin Laden.
Apart from moral issues, the blowback from the
clandestine effort threatens the global campaign to eradicate polio from the face of the planet.
This year’s
polio season–the bulk of cases occur in late summer and autumn–will be
crucial. Polio still spreads in the wild in only three countries:
Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.
I downloaded data from the World Health
Organization about polio vaccination rates for one-year-olds in those three
countries in order
to get a better sense of how well their national campaigns are faring.
Then I used Excel to chart the information over the past
three decades. The closer the world gets to eradication, the more important it
is to keep vaccination rates high.
Note that
Nigeria’s vaccination rates were still climbing–albeit at a slower rate–after a
boycott had been organized in the north in 2003. Nevertheless, the increase was
not high enough or fast enough to prevent the virus from spreading in the
following few years to 20 other countries that had previously been free of
polio.
Click on the
image below to see a larger version of the chart.
About the Author: Christine Gorman is the
editor in charge of health and medicine features for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.
Follow on Twitter @cgorman.
The views expressed are those of the author and are
not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Source: Scientific American
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