To Finish Off Polio
Along with vaccination, antiviral drugs could play a key role in the eradication of poliovirus, but it’s unclear whether today’s candidate therapies will withstand the challenges of the clinic.
The international spread of polio from Pakistan, Syria, and Cameroon to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Equatorial Guinea, respectively, which last month caused World Health Organization (WHO) officials todeclare a public health emergency, serves as a devastating reminder that, although vaccination campaigns have squelched polio in most of the world, eradication is not complete. As of June 11, the virus has sickened 79 people in those three polio-exporting countries and 94 individuals worldwide this year alone. That’s up from 55 cases worldwide through June last year.
Vaccination campaigns and global public health initiatives have caused worldwide cases of polio infection to drop from more than 350,000 reported in 1988, giving researchers reason to hope the infectious disease was near defeat. But as the WHO points out on its website, “as long as a single child remains infected with poliovirus, children in all countries are at risk of contracting the disease.”