Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/polio-out-of-reach/
Is Polio Eradication Slipping Out of Reach?
* By Maryn McKenna Email Author
* July 26, 2011 |
* 8:00 am
Over the weekend, I sat in an airport in the midwestern United States for a 12-hour stretch, trying to get a standby seat. Time after time, the goal was in sight ? the customer service agents and the video screen hanging from the ceiling all told me I was No. 1 on the waitlist ? but every time a flight opened up to boarding, a few higher-priority customers popped up at the last minute and slid onto the list in front of me. The possibility of my getting a seat dangled just out of reach: never impossible, but despite the exhausting wait, never quite achieved.
I suspect this is what polio eradication feels like.
The long effort to wipe the paralyzing disease from the planet, begun in 1988 by a coalition of the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, UNICEF and the service organization Rotary International (recently joined by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), has several times missed its goal of interrupting all transmission of wild virus ? first in 2000, then in 2002 and then again in 2005. The hoped-for date has been moved again, to the end of 2012 this time.
But last week, an independent assessment bluntly warned that the international effort ?is not on track to interrupt polio transmission as it planned to do by the end of 2012″ and likely will miss that goal as well...
Is Polio Eradication Slipping Out of Reach?
* By Maryn McKenna Email Author
* July 26, 2011 |
* 8:00 am
Over the weekend, I sat in an airport in the midwestern United States for a 12-hour stretch, trying to get a standby seat. Time after time, the goal was in sight ? the customer service agents and the video screen hanging from the ceiling all told me I was No. 1 on the waitlist ? but every time a flight opened up to boarding, a few higher-priority customers popped up at the last minute and slid onto the list in front of me. The possibility of my getting a seat dangled just out of reach: never impossible, but despite the exhausting wait, never quite achieved.
I suspect this is what polio eradication feels like.
The long effort to wipe the paralyzing disease from the planet, begun in 1988 by a coalition of the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, UNICEF and the service organization Rotary International (recently joined by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), has several times missed its goal of interrupting all transmission of wild virus ? first in 2000, then in 2002 and then again in 2005. The hoped-for date has been moved again, to the end of 2012 this time.
But last week, an independent assessment bluntly warned that the international effort ?is not on track to interrupt polio transmission as it planned to do by the end of 2012″ and likely will miss that goal as well...