Annie Sparrow is worried:
To avert a polio epidemic, a surveillance system is required that can trace affected children and contacts more rapidly than the virus spreads, but the government’s sloppy surveillance and months of denial mean that it is now impossible to contain it. The government should have allowed access to contested areas to reach affected children. It should also have mounted a widespread water decontamination effort, as well as monitoring sewers nationwide the way Israel is successfully doing. The government’s response, supported by WHO, has been to mount a belated and poorly designed vaccination campaign. It claims without proof that 2.2 million children have received one dose of vaccine.
To reach all children, the best practice—and WHO’s and UNICEF’s international standard—is to conduct a door-to-door campaign. In late November, the Syrian government and the UN finally sent hundreds of thousands of vaccines to some contested areas. But while the UN claims that some of these vaccines have been delivered “door-to-door” in Deir Ezzor, doctors in the region report that the campaign has largely relied on people at the dwindling number of health centers, leaving it to parents to hear of the vaccination campaign and bring their children there. The UN also now acknowledges that it has missed 800,000 children who reside in “inaccessible areas,” including Aleppo, rural Idlib, and rural Damascus.
Recent Dish on the eradication of polio in India here, and earlier coverage here on the difficulty of wiping out the disease worldwide.
The Dish 