[HN Gopher] Malawi finds Africa's first wild polio case in five ...
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       Malawi finds Africa's first wild polio case in five years
        
       Author : gmays
       Score  : 39 points
       Date   : 2022-02-22 21:30 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
        
       | loeg wrote:
       | Horrifying, of course, but a good reminder that the eradication
       | of polio is a modern miracle that we should be grateful for. My
       | uncle (still living) had polio as a child in the US and has
       | suffered from post-polio syndrome his whole life. Now, children
       | get vaccinated against polio at 2 months in the US.
       | 
       | We're very close to eliminating polio globally (~150 cases a
       | year), and that is a tremendously good thing.
        
       | scoofy wrote:
       | This is devastating. God damn covid... we were so damn close to
       | eradicating polio.
        
         | ceejayoz wrote:
         | > As the case came from Pakistan, it does not affect the
         | continent's wild poliovirus-free status, the World Health
         | Organization (WHO) says.
         | 
         | I don't see a COVID angle here.
         | 
         | If you want to blame something, you might look at the CIA's
         | fake vaccination program they used to try and find Bin Laden,
         | and the resulting lack of trust in the legitimate programs in
         | Pakistan and Afghanistan.
         | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
        
           | wesleywt wrote:
           | Malawi is quite far away from Pakistan.
        
             | ceejayoz wrote:
             | There are very few places "quite far away" from anywhere in
             | the days of widespread international jet travel.
        
           | scoofy wrote:
           | >Delays in polio vaccination programs due to COVID-19 in
           | Pakistan: a major threat to Pakistan's long war against polio
           | virus
           | 
           | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7552970/
           | 
           | >The sudden onset of COVID-19 adversely impacted GPEI
           | programme implementation across the globe.
           | 
           | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8531002/
        
             | ceejayoz wrote:
             | > It was nearly close to become polio free with only 12
             | reported cases in 2018 but unfortunately, the number of
             | cases rose to 147 in 2019.
             | 
             | Now, imagine the CIA _hadn 't_ massively fed into a
             | significant anti-vaccination conspiracy theory prevalent in
             | the area nearly a decade earlier?
             | 
             | (That rise, incidentally, probably can't be blamed on
             | COVID.)
             | 
             | I don't doubt that COVID impacted programs, but Pakistan
             | could've been _done_ if we hadn 't shaken trust in the
             | vaccines.
        
       | _djo_ wrote:
       | This is likely the result of two factors. First, families
       | skipping scheduled vaccinations for their newborns out of fear of
       | catching COVID-19 at clinics:
       | https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/tackling-malawis-fears-rou...
       | 
       | And second, as a result of anti-vaccine disinformation, largely
       | spread from the US, Europe, and Russia, that has been reaching
       | increasingly internet-connected African communities via Facebook,
       | WhatsApp, and other social media.
       | 
       | https://www.africanews.com/2021/11/23/vaccine-skepticism-hit...
       | 
       | https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/foreign-anti-va...
       | 
       | It's probably going to get worse.
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-22 23:01 UTC)