Afghanistan Almost Beat Polio. Now the Future Is Uncertain
From www.wired.com
2021-08-25 11:00:00
Maryn McKenna
Excerpt:
For more than a week, global attention to Afghanistan has focused on the Taliban’s stunningly swift return to power, and the international airlift that is getting diplomats, Western workers, and refugees out. But a small cohort of disease experts is riveted by the political turnover for another reason: They worry it could undermine the long campaign to eradicate polio, which hinges on that country—and where, after years of disappointments, success now seems close.
Since 1988, a dogged and very expensive international campaign has chased polio from most of the world. Afghanistan is one of only two countries in which the circulation of wild poliovirus has never been interrupted; Pakistan, with which it shares a long border, is the other. Case counts have ebbed and spiked as religious and political factionalism interrupted delivery of vaccines to children, and they surged again last year, to 140 cases in the two countries, after the Covid pandemic forced a three-month halt in the…
About Author
