Polio Nearly Vanquished: CDC
But small pockets of world still have cases of crippling disease, officials add.
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Polio is almost a thing of the past, but it still exists in small pockets on the planet, U.S. health officials reported.
In 1988, a global effort to eradicate polio, a disease that has crippled millions of children worldwide, began. Since then, the number of cases dropped from 350,000 to just 27 this year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We are on the brink of the eradication of polio — we are closer than ever,” CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said during a media briefing.
“In this period [1988-2016], 2.5 billion children have been vaccinated against polio,” he said. “If it were not for this effort, an estimated 15 million more children would be disabled. Every year polio eradication is delayed, the incremental cost is about $800 million.”
The battle to eradicate the disease, however, continues in areas where it is still endemic, officials added.
Vaccinating children in some parts of the world, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, can be a dangerous task. According to published reports, workers in these areas trying to vaccinate children have been killed by extremists who believe vaccinations sterilize children or that workers are Western spies.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is made up of five groups: the CDC, Rotary International, the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Frieden said.
“We will get to a day when polio is history,” Frieden said.
