Polio

Africa is officially free of wild polio.

Only one human disease has ever been eradicated: smallpox. Efforts are underway to eliminate or eradicate others. Which effort will succeed first? We asked Jeffrey R. Starke, MD, infection control officer at Texas Children’s Hospital.

In May, modeling commissioned by the Stop TB Partnership showed that a lockdown of just 3 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic could set the global fight against tuberculosis back at least 5 to 8 years.

The Global Vaccine Summit, hosted virtually this week by the government of the United Kingdom, raised $8.8 billion in funding for programs to vaccinate 300 million children by 2025, according to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced last week that the U.S. would withdraw from WHO, citing criticism of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its relationship with China.

At least 80 million children aged younger than 1 year could miss routine vaccinations because of the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO and other groups warned today.

Amid a growing COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, or GPEI, recommended that polio vaccination campaigns be postponed until the second half of the year and that countries responding to outbreaks of polio suspend those efforts until June 1, and then re-evaluate the situation.

In 1983, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) held a major conference reviewing the situation with poliomyelitis in the Americas. The conference was noteworthy for the presence of both Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk because they had rarely attended a conference where both were present. There had been a longstanding unfriendly dispute and competition over which vaccine was the better vaccine — Sabin’s live oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) or Salk’s injected inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV). As the two giants in the field each spoke, Sabin went first (alphabetical order was chosen), and when Salk got up to speak, his opening comment was, “Let it go on record that Dr. Sabin and I are in agreement — there is no need for two different vaccines.” While we are using quotation marks, it is possible this is more of a paraphrase from Dr. Pollack’s long-term memory cells of the event. This meeting served as the foundation for initiating a regional effort to interrupt poliovirus transmission in the Americas. The goal of polio eradication in the Americas was declared in May 1985.

WHO recently commemorated the 40th anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, which killed

Wild poliovirus type 3, or WPV3, has been eradicated globally, experts announced on World Polio Day.