Sarah Meredith,regional director of Oceania with Global Citizen,a non-profit,said the news of two cases was “terribly exciting”.
She said the polio program’s success in reaching people with vaccines had been a blueprint for how to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As Australia and the world begin to open up post-COVID,it is worth noting that neither smallpox nor polio has ever reached natural herd immunity,” Ms Meredith said.
“Vaccines are the solution. Like smallpox,it can only be eradicated once there are no cases. About 85 per cent of the population needs to have the polio vaccine for that to happen.”
The GPEI also reports on cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus. If not enough children are immunised against polio,the weakened virus can pass between individuals and over time genetically revert to a form that can cause paralysis.
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That’s why it was so important to reach every last child,said Ms Meredith. “Only once there are zero cases for two to three years,will the World Health Organisation start the certification that we are polio free,” she said.
To achieve total elimination by 2026,though,requires a multibillion-dollar effort to vaccinate 400 million children in 50 countries - an estimated 3.5 million in Afghanistan alone - and surveillance in 70 countries.
Without eradication,polio could again surge to 200,000 new cases.
While there are only two cases,traces of the virus were reported in 63 places,mostly in water,in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Jonas Salk,who was an international hero when he invented the first polio vaccine,has opted not to patent his vaccine. When asked why he didn’t,he replied:“Well,the people,I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
For many polio survivors,the similarities with COVID-19 were hauntingly familiar.
In the United States and Australia,borders between states were closed,and pools and theatres shut to prevent the spread. Houses were fumigated,people quarantined,and entire families ostracised,wrote the University of Melbourne’s Professor Joan McMeeken.
Compared to vaccination for COVID-19,Ms Thomas recalled there was less hesitancy about the polio vaccine,very likely because the effects of polio were highly visible.
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“What is similar is parents were so scared that their kids were going to get polio,” she said. “I remember in my baby book,my mother wrote ‘my darling Gillian has been stricken with the dread polio.’ It was such a poignant statement she made. It just shows the dread in the community,and early on they didn’t know how people contracted it,and there were all sorts of weird ideas.”
“For example,how did I get it? I was a baby. They didn’t know when it was going to strike. They were hanging out for a vaccine to become available.”
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