This article was published by the New York Times on April 10, 2001. It was written by Celia W. Dugger under the title ‘A Campaign Shows Signs of Progress Against Polio’. The article can be accessed through the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04 /13/world/13polio.html?scp=1&sq=Polio%20in%20India&st=cse. The main idea of this article was to enlighten the reader of the current statistics regarding the polio virus in modern society. It was also created to explain why the goal year for global eradication was not reached and what the newest prediction will be.
Nigeria and India are the two areas of greatest concern reguarding the spread of Polio. They have the greatest potential to cause circulation of the polio virus, which could, in part, create a whole new epidemic. This article gave a few reasons for why vaccines were unable to help everyone. In Nigeria, there was a rumor that the Polio vaccine could transfer the AIDs virus. There was another rumor that stated Muslim girls would risk sterilization. These rumors had a significant affect on the failure to eradicate Polio.
According to the article, Polio should have been eradicated about ten years ago. Now researchers say it won’t be eradicated until after 2012. Although we are past our goal, the rate of spread has decreased dramatically in these places and the overall number of cases has dropped significantly. Only two children have been paralyzed by the wild polio virus in Nigeria this year. In comparison, last year there were 123 cases. This decrease in cases shows significant improvement. The World Health Organization (WHO) has concluded that there are 56 cases of paralytic polio in the world this year. According to the article, this is a 75% decrease in cases. The statistics show that global eradication just may be possible and could be experienced in the near future.
I really enjoyed reading this article. It was relevant in so many ways to what we have been learning in class and expanded on some of the things we talked about. For example, we were told that rumors about the vaccine caused some people to not want to take it. This article gave an example about a couple of the rumors. We will not contract AIDS from getting vaccinated and females will not become sterile. I believe that we can eradicate polio. Some of the other obstacles listed in the article may be more difficult to overcome but I think global eradication is possible and health organizations have created terrific campaigns that are taking steps that are slowly but surely making a difference.
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Great choice for an article Raquel! I found this article very interesting because it was so easy to relate to and understand because of our recent polio unit. I also believe that polio is a disease that can be eradicated and hopefully that will happen shortly. It was great to read that Nigeria and India have been showing great progress and that the number of cases of polio have been laregely decreasing. Like Raquel said, we talked about rumors being an obstable to global eradication of polio. This article provided a great example of that by saying how people thought they could get AIDS virus through the vaccine.
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