| Photo Credit: |
CDC - An electron microscope picture of the polio virus |
| Definition: |
Polio, more formally known as Poliomyelitis, is the “inflammation of the grey matter of the spinal cord.” In more general terms, it is the swelling of the nervous tissue in the spinal cord. Polio is caused by the poliovirus. This virus results in a sudden infection, with either little symptoms or severe symptoms, sometimes resulting in paralysis. There are three different types of the disease: Type I, Type II, and Type III.
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| Symptoms: |
In a majority of the polio cases the poliovirus does not show any early symptoms. The later symptoms are listed below. In very few cases does the poliovirus present symptoms such as nonbacterial meningitis or paralysis.
Paralytic Polio has the symptoms of weak muscles or the beginning of paralysis and a fever. Paralysis is usually at its greatest stage within a few days or when the fever reduces.
The poliovirus is spread by oral contact with the virus, usually with infected objects or hands. The poliovirus is transmitted through people who have not had the complete vaccine against polio.
- Fever
- Fatigue
- Headache
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Constipation
- Sore Throat
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| Top Five Countries where Polio is Most Prevalent: |
- In Nigeria 355 people got sick out of 133,881,703 people
- In India 225 people got sick out of 1,049,700,118 people
- In Pakistan 103 people got sick out of 150,694,740 people
- In Niger 40 people got sick out of 11,058,590 people
- In Chad 25 people got sick out of 9,253,493 people
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| Treatment: |
There is no real treatment for polio; no drug has been proven effective. The only treatment that may be suggested is physical therapy. |
| Vaccine: |
There are two types of vaccines for Polio, the IPV (Inactivated Polio Vaccine) and the OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine). The IPV vaccine is made with a dead poliovirus and is given as a shot. Children should receive four doses of the IPV- first at the age of 2 months, then 4 months, then 12-18 months, and finally at the age of 4-6 years old.
The OPV is made from a live poliovirus and is a liquid that is swallowed. OPV is given in parts of the world where polio is still present and spreading. OPV is also given in other countries because the OPV is an easier way to give a polio vaccine. The OPV is better at preventing the disease from spreading, but in rare cases OPV causes a person to contract the disease. Since the risk of obtaining polio in the U.S. is now rare and the IPV will not cause polio, the U.S. does not use the OPV, only the IPV. |
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Human Interest Story: |
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
 FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was the United States President for four terms, the longest serving president of the nations history. He is greatly known as being one of our great presidents. He led a nation through bad economic times and World War II. Many people did not know that he was a paraplegic.
His story starts on August 10, 1921 when he was sailing with his three oldest children. He was sailing in the icy waters of Campobello Island, New Brunswick where the Roosevelt family had a summer cottage. After a long day of sailing the Roosevelt’s ran two miles to a favorite pond for a swim before supper. He told his wife he had a chill and so was too tired to eat supper with the family or even to change out of his wet swimsuit. He thought he was just coming down with a severe cold.
However, by the morning President Roosevelt had a fever of 102 and had no strength in his legs. As the day progressed, he found that he could not move his legs, and the pain spread to his neck and back. It wasn’t for a long time and three doctors later that the family heard that he had indeed contracted polio. FDR must have been exposed to the poliovirus some time before his departure for Campobello.
President Roosevelt always believed he would walk again and so underwent treatment at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital. However, after months of treatment it was final, President Roosevelt would never walk again. President Roosevelt still did not accept this he sought out numerous different treatments options like electric currents, ultraviolet light, massages, and mineral baths.
Then in 1924, FDR received a letter from a friend telling him that a young man named Lewis Joseph had regained walking ability after being paralyzed from polio. He recovered by swimming in the water of a Georgia resort called Warm Springs. In October of that year President Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, went to the resort, and FDR immediately took to the waters. He started a routine of two hours in the pool, then a stretch in the sun, lunch, and then a drive.
In 1926, President Roosevelt announced that he was buying Warm Springs. He was going to turn it into a center for hydrotherapeutic treatment of polio victims. So was established the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, an organization to help polio victims. He invested nearly 200,000 dollars in this foundation. Then, in 1928, seven years after contracting polio, FDR was pressured to run for governor of New York. He agreed and so re-entered a life of politics.
Questions about President Roosevelt’s health circulated, but FDR hit the challenge of politics head on. He showed he was fully capable of holding a public office. He did not want the public to know about his paralysis, so he staged his public appearances very carefully. He would address his audience standing up whenever possible. Although he would stand in public, in his private life he was in a wheelchair that he designed himself. FDR, to much amazement, had the press’s full cooperation. He worked out what was called a “gentlemen’s agreement” with the press. The press was not allowed to take photographs of FDR in his wheelchair or when he looked helpless. There are only two known pictures that show FDR in his wheelchair. Here is one picture: Click Here.
Then in 1932, FDR was elected for the first time to the presidential office. He faced many challenges and a scared nation. This is when he said his famous line, “the only thing to fear is fear itself.” He met these challenges much like he met his personal challenges with polio; he met them with optimism, energy, and imagination.
FDR was the first president that addressed the need of the disabled of the country. In 1934, FDR and his good friend Basil O’Connor began the “birthday ball,” which was a fund raising dance, in honor of FDR’s birthday. This later became known as “The March of Dimes.” This first March of Dimes raised over $1 million dollars for polio. This helped Doctors Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin to develop two kinds of polio vaccines.
The first time President Roosevelt ever showed his paralysis to the Congress, it was March 1, 1945 just after he was elected to a fourth term in office. He entered in his wheelchair and did not stand up to address the congress and company. Six weeks later FDR died on April 12, 1945 from a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs Georgia. Many years after his death his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, said his disease was “a blessing in disguise.” She said it gave him strength, and the disease meant, "he understood human suffering and knew that it could be overcome. He also knew that one must have spiritual and physical courage; and, if one had that, there was no situation that could not be met."
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| What's New |
Polio is a problem in many undeveloped or developing countries. In this year alone (2005), there have already been 786 reported cases of polio in Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria, India, Niger, and Pakistan. Last year, there was a 50 percent increase in cases of polio that amounted to a total of 1,185 confirmed cases; most of which occurred in Nigeria.
The U.N and the WHO (World Health Organization) have launched a huge feat of polio immunizations for 80 million children in 23 countries. The U.N hopes to eradicate the poliovirus by the end of 2005. Also there have been several donations from organizations that have focused on eradicating polio for many years.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has just donated $10 million in grants for scientists to make a powerful new vaccine to stop the spread of this disease. These grants are separate from the other $1 billion that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already donated to get life-saving vaccines to many children in undeveloped countries.
In October 1985 at the anniversary of the United Nations, Rotary International pledged US$120 million to eradicate polio worldwide. Rotary established its PolioPlus program the same year to reach this goal. Thanks to PolioPlus and its consulting organizations, soon the world will be polio-free. Rotary estimates its total contribution to the effort will be over US$600 million.
"In Indonesia, Rumors Imperil Anti-Polio Bid"
By Alan Sipress
Used with courtesy to the Washington Post
DEPOK, Indonesia, 27 August 2005 -- As a longtime health volunteer in the narrow alleys of her hillside neighborhood, Ebon Sunarti has focused on corralling other women into the local clinic so their toddlers could be vaccinated against a range of childhood diseases.
But when polio broke out in her province this year and the government launched a regional campaign to immunize all children under 5, this tough-minded mother held her own 3-year-old daughter back after seeing spurious television reports that the vaccine had made many youngsters sick, even killing a few.
"This is my mother's heart. I have to be so careful," explained Sunarti, 35, her brown eyes warm but adamant.
With polio now spreading faster in Indonesia than anywhere else, U.N. health experts and local officials are struggling to counter rumors that the vaccine is harmful, and to contain the outbreak before the coming rainy season turns it into a full-blown epidemic.
The next test comes Tuesday when Indonesia plans to immunize 24 million children under 5. If the nationwide drive succeeds, it could turn back polio at its farthest frontier since the disease erupted in Nigeria two years ago. But if it fails, international health experts warn, the outbreak could spill over Indonesia's borders to other East Asian countries, dealing a setback to global efforts to eradicate the illness.
"What we have now is a looming crisis," said David Hipgrave, UNICEF's chief for health and nutrition in Indonesia.
The country had been polio-free for a decade until a traveler from the Middle East brought it to Indonesia's main island of Java early this year. The disease has now spread from the Java mountains to the nearby island of Sumatra and north to the capital, Jakarta, infecting at least 226 people.
In May, Indonesia launched a drive to vaccinate children in Jakarta and two neighboring provinces, dispatching health workers into jungles, slums and remote ridgeline villages. The effort exceeded expectations, with more than 6.5 million immunized.
But accounts of four children who died shortly afterward were reported at length in the national media. Though the World Health Organization determined that the deaths were unrelated to the vaccine, Indonesian health officials initially did little to debunk the rumors. So in a second round of vaccinations in June, intended to give the same children another crucial dose, many parents turned the health workers away, and about 725,000 fewer children got the vaccine.
"There were so many cases in the media from every place about children getting fever or getting diarrhea after the first vaccine," Sunarti said. "Many people were afraid the same thing would happen to their child."
In May, Sunarti had taken her daughter, Balqis, to the local clinic to be immunized. But she balked in June because the girl had a cough. Recounting this, Sunarti repeated the common refrain that the polio vaccine can be deadly for children if they are at all unwell.
Her neighbor, Cholifah, also turned away the health volunteers, claiming her son had mild diarrhea. "I learned from the television reports that it is best not to give a vaccine to a baby who is not fit," said Cholifah, 27, furrowing her brow and cradling the boy close.
Hipgrave stressed that the vaccine was safe, even for children who are sick. The four youngsters who died were among the 2,000 children who die every day in Indonesia from dengue, malaria and other ailments, he added.
But now, on the eve of the country's first nationwide vaccination drive, U.N. officials acknowledge that their message has been drowned out by the negative reports on television and in newspapers.
The dramatic decline in vaccinations two months ago, coupled with the spreading outbreak, sounded alarms at the far-off headquarters of U.N. agencies. Last week, WHO sent David L. Heymann, the chief of its global polio eradication program, to Jakarta to secure senior government officials' support for next week's vaccination drive.
Heymann said he was particularly troubled by the spread of the disease to Sumatra, which was battered by the Dec. 26 tsunami. If the virus reaches the western end of the island, where the health care system was destroyed, containment could prove almost impossible, he said. The eradication effort would also become more daunting if polio spread to densely populated Jakarta.
Heymann added that the arrival of the rainy season next month could accelerate the transmission of the disease, which is spread through contaminated water, as streets flood and children play in the mud.
Winning public support now is crucial, he said: "What we don't want to see is rumors get out of control and stop progress like in Nigeria."
The strain of polio now circulating in Indonesia originated in northern Nigeria, where the overwhelmingly Muslim population turned against vaccinators after rumors spread that immunization was a Western plot to weaken Islam by causing sterility or AIDS.
But in Indonesia, the resistance has no religious overtones. In fact, the country's most popular Muslim televangelist, Abdullah Gymnastiar, has been enlisted to publicize next week's drive. The Indonesian Council of Ulemas, or Muslim scholars, has issued a fatwa , or edict, endorsing the vaccine.
Some of the deepest skepticism is in Depok, the sprawling town south of Jakarta where more than a fifth of the children vaccinated in May were kept home a month later. Last week, medical officers called together three dozen volunteers, all middle-age women wearing conservative Muslim head scarves, to rally them for the drive.
"Why did so many parents keep their children home last time?" asked Deksiana Farida, the stout, dark-haired woman in charge of immunization at the local clinic.
" Takut! " the women answered in unison from the rows of plastic chairs. "Afraid!"
"Do not be fooled by the parents," Farida continued, speaking into a microphone over the whir of a single ceiling fan. "You have to be smart about this. You have to make them come to the clinic."
Health workers in Depok have recruited respected community figures, in particular Muslim clerics who run Koran reading groups for women, to preach the virtues of vaccination. But Komora Mingsih, 52, one of the volunteers, lamented it might be too late to save this drive.
"I don't think it will succeed," she added, out of earshot of the other volunteers. "Most likely, people are still afraid."
Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report.
UNICEF responds as polio outbreak in Namibia claims more victims
By Sabine Dolan
Article courtesy of UNICEF
NEW YORK, USA, 7 June 2006 – After a 10-year absence, Namibia has witnessed a sudden reappearance of polio, with 34 suspected cases and 7 deaths recorded so far. The recent outbreak of wild poliovirus has been confirmed in 5 of the country’s 13 regions, but most cases have occurred in and around the capital, Windhoek.
Three of the 34 suspect cases of sudden paralysis are under investigation; 3 have been positively identified as polio. The majority of these cases involve people over 20 years of age, which is highly unusual. The poliovirus is more likely to cause paralysis in adults than in children, and also leads more often to death in older people.
Data gathered so far suggest that the adults affected by the Namibia outbreak had not been immunized, or were under-immunized, against polio. Since the disease mostly affects young children, vaccination campaigns typically target the population under the age of five rather than a country’s entire population.
The outbreak has been expanding at a worrying rate. “The fear is that it is spreading so quickly,” said UNICEF’s Representative in Namibia, Khin-Sandi Lwin.
“Going from 1 case to 34 cases within a two-week period, it’s quite alarming,” she continued. “Because it’s a population-wide issue, the whole population of the country needs to be immunized. It’s a small population in a very vast country, so we have to go out to every small community that’s spread out throughout the country.”
UNICEF is working with Namibia’s national health authorities to plan an immediate response.
“Right now we’re raising the procurement for about 5 million polio vaccines, and that will be for two rounds of polio immunization” said Ms. Lwin. “We’re helping the government gear up for door-to-door vaccination along with outreach to the far, far corners of the country, as well as fixed-site vaccinations in the cities and towns.”
Some 1,500 teams of vaccinators and 1,800 vehicles will be required to carry out this massive exercise.
Experience in outbreak response has shown that quick and repeated vaccination campaigns reaching the target population are highly effective. With such intervention, most outbreaks are stopped within 6 to 12 months.
The origin of the outbreak in Namibia has not yet been determined. But according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the virus may have come from neighbouring Angola, which reported its most recent case of polio in November 2005. As long as the virus circulates anywhere, all countries face a risk of importation.
Namibia has a functioning routine immunization programme and meets international standards of surveillance for acute flaccid paralysis, a sign of polio.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative – spearheaded by WHO, Rotary International, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF – has reduced the worldwide incidence of the disease by 99 per cent since 1988. Presently, however, the initiative faces a funding gap of $85 million for this year and a further $400 million for 2007 and 2008.
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