Polio has been eradicated! - or has it? As the World Health Organization reports, polio is endemic still in 3 countries: Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. However, hopefully soon we’ll be seeing that number go down by 1- Pakistan! In the coming week, the last big anti-polio campaign of the year will be happening in Pakistan as they gear up to vaccinate 4 million children against polio. Teams from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Expanded Program on Immunization, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation met recently to finalize the campaign. Vaccinations are set to be conducted in 17 districts of Pakistan and focused on making sure that the children who weren’t able to be vaccinated previously could be now. One of the biggest factors behind this push for polio eradication is a very low transmission rate this year in Pakistan! WHO reported that this year there were only 16 cases of polio, worldwide - a decrease from the 37 cases reported in 2016. Of the 16 reported in 2017, 7 of those cases came from Pakistan and the campaign team is hoping that this will be the final push to eradicate the wildtype poliovirus!
-Meley Gebresellassie
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