Polio reappearing

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The battle to eradicate polio is suffering some major setbacks, including new cases in Russia and Tajikistan. The World’s Katy Clark reports that some experts are now rethinking the war on polio.

Also, listen to David Baron’s story: Eradicating Guinea worm disease.

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  Russia has confirmed its first case of polio in 13 years.  Polio is a highly contagious disease that can cause paralysis and death, especially in young children.  The polio virus was eliminated from the United States a generation ago and a global eradication campaign has pushed it to the brink of extinction worldwide.  But the new case in Russia and other recent setbacks have raised questions about how and when the global campaign will reach its ultimate goal.  The World’s Katy Clark reports.

KATY CLARK:  Health officials say the know how polio arrived in Russia.  The one confirmed case is a 9 month old girl from the former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan.  Tajikistan is in the midst of what a World Health Organization official calls a huge polio outbreak.  Since January, at least 56 cases have been confirmed there with 12 deaths.  Health officials in Tajikistan have begun a massive immunization campaign to stop the virus from spreading.  WHO country director in Tajikistan, Santino Severoni says acting quickly is key.

SANTINO SEVERONI:  We know exactly very well what needs to be done in order to control the epidemic.  And we need to control it, we will control it.

CLARK: Tajikistan had been certified polio free eight years ago.  Health officials say the virus entered the country from India.  India is one of the few countries where polio has never been wiped out.  The others are Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.  The World Health Organization and its various partners launched an initiative in 1988 to eradicate the disease.  Since then, the number of polio cases worldwide has dropped by more than 99%, to about 2,000 annually.  But it has remained stuck at that number for the last decade.  Getting that number down to zero has proven frustratingly illusive.

CAROL PANDACK:  This last mile in this race, that has clearly been very challenging.

CLARK: Carol Pandack runs the polio program for Rotary International.  The groups has contributed more than 900 million dollars to the fight against polio.  Pandack says Rotarians remain committed to eradicating the disease despite the challenges and costs.

PANDACK: It may cost a lot in the short term to finish polio, but over the long term it is a much better investment than having to spend this much money every year indefinitely.

CLARK: Pandack says once polio is gone for good, there will be no more need to vaccinate against it.  But given the repeated setbacks, some are questioning whether eradication should still be the goal.  University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, Arthur Kaplan, says getting down to zero cases will be extraordinarily expensive and he contends that money could be better spent in other ways.

ARTHUR KAPLAN:  Trying to get the last 20,000 cases of polio in a country may mean that we’re not getting them clean water which would benefit hundreds of thousands or millions of people.  Trying to chase down the last hundred cases in Afghanistan may mean that there’s no hospital built because all the money went into the polio eradication campaign.

CLARK: Kaplan remains in the minority though.  WHO and its partners say they remain as committed as ever to the fight to eradicate polio.  They are encouraged by this year’s numbers.  Despite the outbreak in Tajikistan, this year has seen a 71% decline in polio cases worldwide compared to the same period last year.  Still, the polio eradication campaign has been reevaluating its strategy.  Next week it will release a new blueprint for how to achieve its goal and it has a new target date.  When the project started, the plan was to eradicate polio by the year 2000.  Now health officials hope to do so by 2013.  For The World, this Katy Clark.

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