23 ms·

Africa declared free of wild polio

1387 points by riffraff 6y ago

ConsiDisc 6y ago
Luckily friends do ashamed to do suppose Polio.
rmason 6y ago
My generation was the first to be spared from polio. But I had relatives that were not as lucky. I knew kids just a few years older than me who lived in iron lungs. This is a massive accomplishment that should be celebrated.
- stephenhuey 6y ago
  I was born decades after the vaccine, but the reality of polio was prominent in my mind because a friend’s mom was left with a limp wrist after having polio as a child. So I was cheering for Dikembe Mutombo, one of my favorite NBA players, when I heard he was putting some of his fame and fortune towards fighting polio. On April 13, 2011, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health gave Mutombo the Goodermote Humanitarian Award for his work against polio both globally and in Congo, his home country.
- zaphar 6y ago
  My Mom nearly died from it when she was a kid. The lifelong complications can be really debilitating even if you survive. I'll be very happy when it's declared fully eradicated everywhere.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I think the celebration is slightly premature. Several areas in the African interior are inaccessible due to conflict, so testing is not possible. ... so we are not really certain it's been eradicated in those areas. Also important is the possibility of environmental reservoirs for the disease in nature. Hopefully not, but it is still possible. Only continued vigilance can guarantee victory. Many areas were declared polio free once before, only to have it resurface.
  - TempLogsForOne 6y ago
    You mustn't twist yourself into knots. You are correct, and this WHO body declaration has nothing to do with the facts on the face of things.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      > this WHO body declaration has nothing to do with the facts ...par for the course these days.
tempsy 6y ago
more children had been getting polio from polio vaccines than getting it in the wild for a long time
- eloff 6y ago
  Possibly, but the vaccines have prevented many orders of magnitude more cases: "Since 2000, more than 10 billion doses of OPV have been administered to nearly 3 billion children worldwide. As a result, more than 13 million cases of polio have been prevented, and the disease has been reduced by more than 99%. During that time, 24 circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) outbreaks occurred in 21 countries, resulting in fewer than 760 VDPV cases."[1] [1] https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v...
  - tboyd47 6y ago
    There were only 350,000 cases in 1988, when the vaccine was first deployed, and 5 billion people on Earth then versus 7 billion now. How do 350,000 cases turn into 13 million, according to the WHO? [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelit...
    - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
      350,000 cases/year * 32 years = 11.2 million cases, which is in the right ballpark, assuming we're counting from 1988.
    - gus_massa 6y ago
      350,000 cases/year * 32 years = 11.2 million cases They may have some more precise method, but with this estimation 11 or 13 millions doesn't seams to be too off.
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  You know what they say: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Based on what data do you make this statement?
melling 6y ago
Now the world needs to go after malaria in Africa. Throughout the world a child dies every 2 minutes from malaria. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/infectious-diseases-covid19-malaria-hiv-aids-africa/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/infectious-diseases-c... I’ve been to South Africa twice. Most other Subsaharan countries have large malaria problems. Looking forward to that not being a problem in my lifetime.
- coldpie 6y ago
  > Now the world needs to go after malaria in Africa. They are. Take a moment to celebrate this victory :)
  - melling 6y ago
    We are so close to wiping polio out globally. Bill Gates has been trying hard. A few cases in Asia every year and we’re done. Probably less than 100 globally in a few countries. Bill Gates will get it. Anyway, while it’s great, and we should be happy, 400,000 kids will die from malaria in Africa this year. We could do more to save millions of lives over the next 10 years.
    - hu3 6y ago
      I often see citations of Bill Gates charity being downvoted to oblivion on HN and I can never figure out why. Would appreciate if someone could enlighten me. Surely there must be a good reason.
      - dylz 6y ago
        My assumption is that there are people that dislike how Gates earned his money.
        koonsolo 6y ago
        By running a successful business? Some people really need to get a proper perspective on this. Did he bribe people? Did he extort people? Yeah, he was running a competitive business where he took advantage of his market position... just like any other business. But oh, "I love my iPhone, and Steve Jobs is therefore my hero. So Apple is good because it loves it's customers".
sparrish 6y ago
This is the best news I've heard in weeks. What a great milestone and a wonderful world we live in. Congrats to all the NGOs, African and international, that worked so hard.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  For more uplifting news, I spent a few hours today diving into figures about human development for a small project about greatest differences between neighbouring countries. They're basically all going up. Aside from countries at war (e.g. Syria) and minor setbacks like 2008, we're doing better all the time. I actually made a wallpaper from one of them: https://lucb1e.com/tmp/hn-whatsthisgraph.png https://lucb1e.com/tmp/hn-whatsthisgraph.png What does this show? Answer in rot13: Rnpu yvar vf n pbhagel, fubjvat yvsr rkcrpgnapl ng ovegu. Gurer ner fbzr boivbhf bhgyvref ohg 'orgjrra gur yvarf' vf nyfb n pbhagel gung qrpyvarq funecyl: Flevn. Yrg'f whfg abg qb jne ntnva, 'xnl? You can find this graph interactively on the United Nations Development Programme website: http://hdr.undp.org/en/data http://hdr.undp.org/en/data (this graph can be found in (rot13) urnygu -> yvsr rkcrpgnapl ng ovegu).
adaisadais 6y ago
This is the sort of news the world needs today. Let’s keep the ball rolling. Keep making things happen, HN Community.
- andbberger 6y ago
  Ah, yes, the hacker community is well known for their public health contributions
Symmetry 6y ago
Hey polio, hope you can say hello to smallpox for us soon.
tsewlliw 6y ago
Here's hoping we double down on Polio efforts and ensure it is entirely eliminated. Finishing is super important, and this milestone shows this is something humanity can finish.
- baybal2 6y ago
  Especially in light of what is happening in Pakistan, and India now. Polio was "almost" done there in all, but a few most remote, and backward areas. And it was exactly because these tiny reservoirs were left, it came back to Karachi, and Mumbai.
  - xerxesaa 6y ago
    As far as I know, it's only in Pakistan and Afghanistan (not India). Where did you get the news about Mumbai?
    - baybal2 6y ago
      https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/post-scare-bmc-to-start-special-polio-vaccine-drive-today/articleshow/66112947.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/post-scare-b...
actuator 6y ago
I know some people in tech don't like his Microsoft past but considering the role of Melinda and Bill Gates foundation in this and his continued funding for other such initiatives including Covid-19 vaccines, I think if someone deserves a symbolic award like Nobel Peace Prize(or whatever the equivalent would be in this case) it would be both of them.
- Oblouk 6y ago
  Absolutely
tombert 6y ago
Finally, some really good news in 2020. This has brightened up my exceedingly crappy week :). I've read about polio a few times, and every time I do I feel grateful to be born after they started vaccinating every child in the United States. It's a terrible disease and it would be amazing if it went the way of smallpox and (hopefully soon) Dracunculiasis.
makomk 6y ago
This is not the big, massive victory that the article makes it sound like. The caveat "wild" is doing a lot of work that isn't properly explained. What this means is that for the last several years, all the cases of polio in Africa have been from circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus - basically, a version of the weakened virus used in the vaccine which has circulated for long enough to reverse the mutations that weaken it. It spreads like wild virus and paralyzes like wild virus, but technically it's not wild-type virus. (As I understand it, the only practical difference is that we can tell from genetic sequencing that it came from the vaccine rather than being wild-type.) And this can't be fixed by stopping the vaccination program - in fact, that actually makes things worse, since it gives the deadly vaccine-derived poliovirus more people who don't have immunity to infect. Some of the other news coverage like the Reuters article is a little better at correctly pointing this caveat out: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-polio-africa/wild-polio-sufferers-reflect-as-africa-declared-free-of-the-disease-idUKKBN25L14I https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-polio-africa/wild-p... It's not even clear that it's poasible to actually eliminate polio in developing countries with this vaccine or any existing vaccines. The developed countries managed it but they had far better infrastructure to roll out first the oral vaccine and then the inactivated vaccine to everyone, and also far better sanitation, and it's likely both of these things mattered - under-vaccination makes this problem a lot worse, and whilst the inactivsted vaccine protects people from polio there's some doubt as to whether it can stop them spreading it via the oral-fecal route due to poor immunity in the gut. The current hope seems to be developing and deploying a new, better live vaccine which cannot easily regain its original virulence.
- vilhelm_s 6y ago
  Right. There was some previous discussion on Hacker News about this under the headline "Polio eradication program faces hard choices as endgame strategy falters" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21920406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21920406].
- yyyk 6y ago
  CVDPV still is weaker than "wild" polio - only about 1000 cases ever (out of billions of vaccinations), and outbreaks are controlled quickly (if slower than the original expectation). Apparently both due to remaining mutations and since it's nearly all polio type 2 - which was otherwise eradicated a long time ago, apparently that type is a bit less "fit". It's a problem, but one that can be managed by the existing tools which brought polio down to this level - many countries switched from trivalent OPV or removed OPV2 precisely to avoid this scenario, and a new OPV2 vaccine will hopefully eliminate the problem in the affected areas: http://polioeradication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/cVDPV2-nOPV2-fact-sheet-July-2020.pdf http://polioeradication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/cVDPV...
EGreg 6y ago
I show stuff like this to anti vaxxers and ask if there have ever been any vaccines they like. They say that about cowpox and polio sanitation played a major role, etc. And that we don’t look at other variables.
aazaa 6y ago
The BBC article doesn't explain what "wild" means in detail. This NPR article does: > And there's another type of polio that's problematic. Sixteen African nations are currently battling outbreaks of what's called "vaccine-derived polio." This is a form of polio that stems from the oral polio vaccine used in lower income countries because it is cheap and easy to administer. > The oral vaccine contains a live but weakened version of the polio virus. The virus replicates inside the child's intestine and eventually is excreted. In places with poor sanitation, fecal matter can enter the drinking water supply and the virus is able to start spreading from person to person. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/25/905884740/africa-declares-wild-polio-is-wiped-out-yet-it-persists-in-vaccine-derived-cases https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/25/9058847...
- mleonhard 6y ago
  A concise explanation of vaccine-derived polio: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v...
microcolonel 6y ago
Massive congratulations! Let's see about malaria next. I have heard that it might not be crazy to apply DDT sparingly and appropriately to this problem. To my knowledge, it was a big part of how mosquito-borne disease was virtually eradicated in North America. Wetland habitat destruction is a real concern, but so is the untimely deaths of hundreds of millions of people.
- hamandcheese 6y ago
  Genetically modified mosquitoes seems to me like a much better way to deal with the problem, though it is controversial: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-florida-test-release https://www.sciencenews.org/article/genetically-modified-mos...
hermitcrab 6y ago
This is an amazing achievement and I salute everyone who worked so hard to get this far. My grandfather had polio and was lucky to survive. He spent quite a bit of time in an iron lung. Apparently it changed his personality significantly for the worse.
yyyk 6y ago
Good, but I am unaware of any good solution to the endemic AfPak area. This is IMHO a mirror of world trends: Africa seems to be getting better (if slowly), but parts of Asia are slipping behind. It's possible that the program is in an undeclared race: Can we eliminate polio before these areas get even worse?
qwerty456127 6y ago
Again?
george120 6y ago
Well good thing you started with that since you are clearly not familiar with him at all. He is very very well read and highly involved with the charity. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/what-is-negative-seo.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/what-is-negative-seo.htm... https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/How-to-improve-your-blog.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/How-to-improve-your-blog... https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/whatsapp-web-scan.html?m=1 https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/whatsapp-web-scan.html?m...
smabie 6y ago
I went to college with a girl from Africa who had Polio and was wheelchair bound. Good to know it's not a problem anymore! She actually told me when she first came to America a doctor asked why she was in a wheelchair and she said Polio. The doctor didn't believe her!
tus88 6y ago
Is there some other kind of polio still rampant?
- dennis_jeeves 6y ago
  Yes, the polio induced by the vaccine is actually the the more prevalent one today. They call it by fancy name: 'paralysis-something-something' so that the vaccine is not blamed for the polio.
  - mkl 6y ago
    It's explicitly called "vaccine-derived polio" in every article I've read about it, including from the WHO: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v...
screamingninja 6y ago
Sometime in 2065: Africa declared free of wild COVID-19
- pinkfoot 6y ago
  Probably before the rest of you.
cmckn 6y ago
The stories about this introduced me to the concept of a vaccine-derived polio. Basically, the weakened form of polio that is in the vaccine, which usually survives in your GI tract for a couple weeks before being eliminated, can be passed onto others if there is a lack of basic sanitation (polio is primarily transmitted through infected fecal matter). If this is in a community with low immunization rates, the vaccine-derived virus can survive much longer than intended. This can actually provide a benefit to others, because they will achieve some level of immunity from the weakened virus. However, if the weakened virus is allowed to circulate for a long time (>1 year), it has the (unlikely) chance to mutate and become less weak. Of course, the number of severe polio cases that have been avoided by the vaccine vastly outweighs the number of vaccine-derived cases. But I thought this was an interesting concept! > ...more than 13 million cases of polio have been prevented, and the disease has been reduced by more than 99%. During that time, 24 cVDPV (circulating vaccine-derived polio virus) outbreaks occurred in 21 countries, resulting in fewer than 760 VDPV cases. More here: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v...
- jacquesm 6y ago
  This is the sort of thing anti-vaxxers seize on and distort.
  - cmckn 6y ago
    Unfortunately, yes. Modern medicine has created a sort of utopia that humanity couldn't have imagined a few hundred years ago. But there is a dark side that includes conspiratorial thinkers like anti-vaxxers.
yazanradaideh 6y ago
https://flowingtravel.com/ https://flowingtravel.com/
sm4rk0 6y ago
Perfect timing! Just before the first non-Russian CoViD-19 vaccine gets approved, so people can more easily accept its shorter/skipped testing phases.
sassycassie 6y ago
This is absolutely incredible
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
I’ve always found it interesting to note that while the list of infectious diseases in humans [1] is long, it isn’t that long. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_infectious_diseases https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_infectious_diseases
- bufferoverflow 6y ago
  That's because that list isn't complete. Doesn't have prion diseases, pseudomonas aeruginosa, balamuthia, macacine alphaherpesvirus 1, raccoon worm, orthohantavirus, and a million unknown bacteria and thousands of rare parasites and viruses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion#Diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion#Diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balamuthia_mandrillaris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balamuthia_mandrillaris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macacine_alphaherpesvirus_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macacine_alphaherpesvirus_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylisascaris_procyonis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylisascaris_procyonis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthohantavirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthohantavirus Some of them we have no idea how to treat. Prions are 100% deadly.
- ruffrey 6y ago
  I hope that soon, aging is classified as a disease, and makes it onto that list.
  - xplune 6y ago
    As fun as it sounds, I think aging is what drives humans to progress and evolve. So just in my opinion, I don't think classifying aging as disease is a good idea.
    - fooyc 6y ago
      Are we still evolving, since we usually die much after breeding ?
      - 6y ago
taylorbuley 6y ago
If you're into "service over self" I encourage you to join your local Rotary club. Here are our "four way test" of the things we think, say and do: * Is it the truth? * Is it fair to all concerned? * Will it build goodwill and better friendships? * Will it be beneficial to all concerned? Finding Nash equilibria for #4 isn't easy but it's a good set of guiding principles and if you believe them, you should think about surrounding yourself with others who do too.
torgian 6y ago
I'm not gonna lie, I first read this as "Free from wild potato". Good to see wild polio is going down.
babu_bhaiya 6y ago
Victory
bluedays 6y ago
Oh good, now we only have domesticated polio
hkmurakami 6y ago
For those who are interested and able, Rotary International and the Gates Foundation have been doing a 2 for 1 match for years, tripling your gift towards ending polio. https://www.endpolio.org/home https://www.endpolio.org/home As a past contributor, it brings me great joy to see this milestone today.
AnonHP 6y ago
This has been a very long fight, and there are a few pockets to defeat to declare that we’ve eradicated polio. I see many comments talking about malaria. One of the most effective ways to tackle that is through the work done by organizations, like Against Malaria Foundation (AMF), that are also supported by Effective Altruism based organizations (like GiveWell, Effective Altriusm Funds), etc.). The cost of saving a life from malaria is quite low with this. I would strongly encourage people who donate to charities to donate at least a small amount regularly to AMF or the others mentioned above.
just_throw_away 6y ago
Great we've traded the polio that doesn't make us money for polio that makes us tons of money. Time to celebrate.
imkshax 6y ago
imkshax@gmail.com
ISaIF73 6y ago
Unfortunately this will not change the situation if Africa that much. As the Malthusian Trap is still live there and the cause of the great divergence between the first worl and the third world.
- scollet 6y ago
  Africa is certainly not a set of countries?
Casereads 6y ago
What about the other side effects?
scandox 6y ago
Just read a biography of Jonas Salk and a major portion of it is devoted to the issue of the oral vaccine (OPV) versus the injected vaccine (IPV). Salk spent a large portion of his later life pressing for the OPV to be delicensed because he considered any risk of live vaccine infecting immuno-suppressed persons or of the weakened virus becoming reactivated unacceptable. As I understand it the OPV was still in use in the US until 1999. It was an interesting case study in the different forces that kept a vaccine proven to cause some cases of Polio every year in use.

1387 points by riffraff 6y ago

Luckily friends do ashamed to do suppose Polio.

My generation was the first to be spared from polio. But I had relatives that were not as lucky. I knew kids just a few years older than me who lived in iron lungs. This is a massive accomplishment that should be celebrated.

stephenhuey 6y ago
I was born decades after the vaccine, but the reality of polio was prominent in my mind because a friend’s mom was left with a limp wrist after having polio as a child. So I was cheering for Dikembe Mutombo, one of my favorite NBA players, when I heard he was putting some of his fame and fortune towards fighting polio. On April 13, 2011, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health gave Mutombo the Goodermote Humanitarian Award for his work against polio both globally and in Congo, his home country.
zaphar 6y ago
My Mom nearly died from it when she was a kid. The lifelong complications can be really debilitating even if you survive. I'll be very happy when it's declared fully eradicated everywhere.
koheripbal 6y ago
I think the celebration is slightly premature. Several areas in the African interior are inaccessible due to conflict, so testing is not possible. ... so we are not really certain it's been eradicated in those areas. Also important is the possibility of environmental reservoirs for the disease in nature. Hopefully not, but it is still possible. Only continued vigilance can guarantee victory. Many areas were declared polio free once before, only to have it resurface.
- TempLogsForOne 6y ago
  You mustn't twist yourself into knots. You are correct, and this WHO body declaration has nothing to do with the facts on the face of things.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    > this WHO body declaration has nothing to do with the facts ...par for the course these days.

tempsy 6y ago

more children had been getting polio from polio vaccines than getting it in the wild for a long time

eloff 6y ago
Possibly, but the vaccines have prevented many orders of magnitude more cases: "Since 2000, more than 10 billion doses of OPV have been administered to nearly 3 billion children worldwide. As a result, more than 13 million cases of polio have been prevented, and the disease has been reduced by more than 99%. During that time, 24 circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) outbreaks occurred in 21 countries, resulting in fewer than 760 VDPV cases."[1] [1] https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v...
- tboyd47 6y ago
  There were only 350,000 cases in 1988, when the vaccine was first deployed, and 5 billion people on Earth then versus 7 billion now. How do 350,000 cases turn into 13 million, according to the WHO? [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelit...
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    350,000 cases/year * 32 years = 11.2 million cases, which is in the right ballpark, assuming we're counting from 1988.
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    350,000 cases/year * 32 years = 11.2 million cases They may have some more precise method, but with this estimation 11 or 13 millions doesn't seams to be too off.
vanderZwan 6y ago
You know what they say: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Based on what data do you make this statement?

melling 6y ago

Now the world needs to go after malaria in Africa. Throughout the world a child dies every 2 minutes from malaria. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/infectious-diseases-covid19-malaria-hiv-aids-africa/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/infectious-diseases-c... I’ve been to South Africa twice. Most other Subsaharan countries have large malaria problems. Looking forward to that not being a problem in my lifetime.

coldpie 6y ago
> Now the world needs to go after malaria in Africa. They are. Take a moment to celebrate this victory :)
- melling 6y ago
  We are so close to wiping polio out globally. Bill Gates has been trying hard. A few cases in Asia every year and we’re done. Probably less than 100 globally in a few countries. Bill Gates will get it. Anyway, while it’s great, and we should be happy, 400,000 kids will die from malaria in Africa this year. We could do more to save millions of lives over the next 10 years.
  - hu3 6y ago
    I often see citations of Bill Gates charity being downvoted to oblivion on HN and I can never figure out why. Would appreciate if someone could enlighten me. Surely there must be a good reason.
    - dylz 6y ago
      My assumption is that there are people that dislike how Gates earned his money.
      - koonsolo 6y ago
        By running a successful business? Some people really need to get a proper perspective on this. Did he bribe people? Did he extort people? Yeah, he was running a competitive business where he took advantage of his market position... just like any other business. But oh, "I love my iPhone, and Steve Jobs is therefore my hero. So Apple is good because it loves it's customers".

sparrish 6y ago

This is the best news I've heard in weeks. What a great milestone and a wonderful world we live in. Congrats to all the NGOs, African and international, that worked so hard.

lucb1e 6y ago
For more uplifting news, I spent a few hours today diving into figures about human development for a small project about greatest differences between neighbouring countries. They're basically all going up. Aside from countries at war (e.g. Syria) and minor setbacks like 2008, we're doing better all the time. I actually made a wallpaper from one of them: https://lucb1e.com/tmp/hn-whatsthisgraph.png https://lucb1e.com/tmp/hn-whatsthisgraph.png What does this show? Answer in rot13: Rnpu yvar vf n pbhagel, fubjvat yvsr rkcrpgnapl ng ovegu. Gurer ner fbzr boivbhf bhgyvref ohg 'orgjrra gur yvarf' vf nyfb n pbhagel gung qrpyvarq funecyl: Flevn. Yrg'f whfg abg qb jne ntnva, 'xnl? You can find this graph interactively on the United Nations Development Programme website: http://hdr.undp.org/en/data http://hdr.undp.org/en/data (this graph can be found in (rot13) urnygu -> yvsr rkcrpgnapl ng ovegu).

adaisadais 6y ago

This is the sort of news the world needs today. Let’s keep the ball rolling. Keep making things happen, HN Community.

andbberger 6y ago
Ah, yes, the hacker community is well known for their public health contributions

Symmetry 6y ago

Hey polio, hope you can say hello to smallpox for us soon.

tsewlliw 6y ago

Here's hoping we double down on Polio efforts and ensure it is entirely eliminated. Finishing is super important, and this milestone shows this is something humanity can finish.

baybal2 6y ago
Especially in light of what is happening in Pakistan, and India now. Polio was "almost" done there in all, but a few most remote, and backward areas. And it was exactly because these tiny reservoirs were left, it came back to Karachi, and Mumbai.
- xerxesaa 6y ago
  As far as I know, it's only in Pakistan and Afghanistan (not India). Where did you get the news about Mumbai?
  - baybal2 6y ago
    https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/post-scare-bmc-to-start-special-polio-vaccine-drive-today/articleshow/66112947.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/post-scare-b...

actuator 6y ago

I know some people in tech don't like his Microsoft past but considering the role of Melinda and Bill Gates foundation in this and his continued funding for other such initiatives including Covid-19 vaccines, I think if someone deserves a symbolic award like Nobel Peace Prize(or whatever the equivalent would be in this case) it would be both of them.

Oblouk 6y ago
Absolutely

tombert 6y ago

Finally, some really good news in 2020. This has brightened up my exceedingly crappy week :). I've read about polio a few times, and every time I do I feel grateful to be born after they started vaccinating every child in the United States. It's a terrible disease and it would be amazing if it went the way of smallpox and (hopefully soon) Dracunculiasis.

makomk 6y ago

This is not the big, massive victory that the article makes it sound like. The caveat "wild" is doing a lot of work that isn't properly explained. What this means is that for the last several years, all the cases of polio in Africa have been from circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus - basically, a version of the weakened virus used in the vaccine which has circulated for long enough to reverse the mutations that weaken it. It spreads like wild virus and paralyzes like wild virus, but technically it's not wild-type virus. (As I understand it, the only practical difference is that we can tell from genetic sequencing that it came from the vaccine rather than being wild-type.) And this can't be fixed by stopping the vaccination program - in fact, that actually makes things worse, since it gives the deadly vaccine-derived poliovirus more people who don't have immunity to infect. Some of the other news coverage like the Reuters article is a little better at correctly pointing this caveat out: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-polio-africa/wild-polio-sufferers-reflect-as-africa-declared-free-of-the-disease-idUKKBN25L14I https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-polio-africa/wild-p... It's not even clear that it's poasible to actually eliminate polio in developing countries with this vaccine or any existing vaccines. The developed countries managed it but they had far better infrastructure to roll out first the oral vaccine and then the inactivated vaccine to everyone, and also far better sanitation, and it's likely both of these things mattered - under-vaccination makes this problem a lot worse, and whilst the inactivsted vaccine protects people from polio there's some doubt as to whether it can stop them spreading it via the oral-fecal route due to poor immunity in the gut. The current hope seems to be developing and deploying a new, better live vaccine which cannot easily regain its original virulence.

vilhelm_s 6y ago
Right. There was some previous discussion on Hacker News about this under the headline "Polio eradication program faces hard choices as endgame strategy falters" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21920406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21920406].
yyyk 6y ago
CVDPV still is weaker than "wild" polio - only about 1000 cases ever (out of billions of vaccinations), and outbreaks are controlled quickly (if slower than the original expectation). Apparently both due to remaining mutations and since it's nearly all polio type 2 - which was otherwise eradicated a long time ago, apparently that type is a bit less "fit". It's a problem, but one that can be managed by the existing tools which brought polio down to this level - many countries switched from trivalent OPV or removed OPV2 precisely to avoid this scenario, and a new OPV2 vaccine will hopefully eliminate the problem in the affected areas: http://polioeradication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/cVDPV2-nOPV2-fact-sheet-July-2020.pdf http://polioeradication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/cVDPV...

EGreg 6y ago

I show stuff like this to anti vaxxers and ask if there have ever been any vaccines they like. They say that about cowpox and polio sanitation played a major role, etc. And that we don’t look at other variables.

aazaa 6y ago

The BBC article doesn't explain what "wild" means in detail. This NPR article does: > And there's another type of polio that's problematic. Sixteen African nations are currently battling outbreaks of what's called "vaccine-derived polio." This is a form of polio that stems from the oral polio vaccine used in lower income countries because it is cheap and easy to administer. > The oral vaccine contains a live but weakened version of the polio virus. The virus replicates inside the child's intestine and eventually is excreted. In places with poor sanitation, fecal matter can enter the drinking water supply and the virus is able to start spreading from person to person. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/25/905884740/africa-declares-wild-polio-is-wiped-out-yet-it-persists-in-vaccine-derived-cases https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/25/9058847...

mleonhard 6y ago
A concise explanation of vaccine-derived polio: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v...

microcolonel 6y ago

Massive congratulations! Let's see about malaria next. I have heard that it might not be crazy to apply DDT sparingly and appropriately to this problem. To my knowledge, it was a big part of how mosquito-borne disease was virtually eradicated in North America. Wetland habitat destruction is a real concern, but so is the untimely deaths of hundreds of millions of people.

hamandcheese 6y ago
Genetically modified mosquitoes seems to me like a much better way to deal with the problem, though it is controversial: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-florida-test-release https://www.sciencenews.org/article/genetically-modified-mos...

hermitcrab 6y ago

This is an amazing achievement and I salute everyone who worked so hard to get this far. My grandfather had polio and was lucky to survive. He spent quite a bit of time in an iron lung. Apparently it changed his personality significantly for the worse.

yyyk 6y ago

Good, but I am unaware of any good solution to the endemic AfPak area. This is IMHO a mirror of world trends: Africa seems to be getting better (if slowly), but parts of Asia are slipping behind. It's possible that the program is in an undeclared race: Can we eliminate polio before these areas get even worse?

qwerty456127 6y ago

Again?

george120 6y ago

Well good thing you started with that since you are clearly not familiar with him at all. He is very very well read and highly involved with the charity. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/what-is-negative-seo.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/what-is-negative-seo.htm... https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/How-to-improve-your-blog.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/How-to-improve-your-blog... https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/whatsapp-web-scan.html?m=1 https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/whatsapp-web-scan.html?m...

smabie 6y ago

I went to college with a girl from Africa who had Polio and was wheelchair bound. Good to know it's not a problem anymore! She actually told me when she first came to America a doctor asked why she was in a wheelchair and she said Polio. The doctor didn't believe her!

tus88 6y ago

Is there some other kind of polio still rampant?

dennis_jeeves 6y ago
Yes, the polio induced by the vaccine is actually the the more prevalent one today. They call it by fancy name: 'paralysis-something-something' so that the vaccine is not blamed for the polio.
- mkl 6y ago
  It's explicitly called "vaccine-derived polio" in every article I've read about it, including from the WHO: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v...

screamingninja 6y ago

Sometime in 2065: Africa declared free of wild COVID-19

pinkfoot 6y ago
Probably before the rest of you.

cmckn 6y ago

The stories about this introduced me to the concept of a vaccine-derived polio. Basically, the weakened form of polio that is in the vaccine, which usually survives in your GI tract for a couple weeks before being eliminated, can be passed onto others if there is a lack of basic sanitation (polio is primarily transmitted through infected fecal matter). If this is in a community with low immunization rates, the vaccine-derived virus can survive much longer than intended. This can actually provide a benefit to others, because they will achieve some level of immunity from the weakened virus. However, if the weakened virus is allowed to circulate for a long time (>1 year), it has the (unlikely) chance to mutate and become less weak. Of course, the number of severe polio cases that have been avoided by the vaccine vastly outweighs the number of vaccine-derived cases. But I thought this was an interesting concept! > ...more than 13 million cases of polio have been prevented, and the disease has been reduced by more than 99%. During that time, 24 cVDPV (circulating vaccine-derived polio virus) outbreaks occurred in 21 countries, resulting in fewer than 760 VDPV cases. More here: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-vaccine-derived-polio https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/what-is-v...

jacquesm 6y ago
This is the sort of thing anti-vaxxers seize on and distort.
- cmckn 6y ago
  Unfortunately, yes. Modern medicine has created a sort of utopia that humanity couldn't have imagined a few hundred years ago. But there is a dark side that includes conspiratorial thinkers like anti-vaxxers.

yazanradaideh 6y ago

https://flowingtravel.com/ https://flowingtravel.com/

sm4rk0 6y ago

Perfect timing! Just before the first non-Russian CoViD-19 vaccine gets approved, so people can more easily accept its shorter/skipped testing phases.

sassycassie 6y ago

This is absolutely incredible

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

I’ve always found it interesting to note that while the list of infectious diseases in humans [1] is long, it isn’t that long. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_infectious_diseases https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_infectious_diseases

bufferoverflow 6y ago
That's because that list isn't complete. Doesn't have prion diseases, pseudomonas aeruginosa, balamuthia, macacine alphaherpesvirus 1, raccoon worm, orthohantavirus, and a million unknown bacteria and thousands of rare parasites and viruses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion#Diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion#Diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balamuthia_mandrillaris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balamuthia_mandrillaris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macacine_alphaherpesvirus_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macacine_alphaherpesvirus_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylisascaris_procyonis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylisascaris_procyonis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthohantavirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthohantavirus Some of them we have no idea how to treat. Prions are 100% deadly.
ruffrey 6y ago
I hope that soon, aging is classified as a disease, and makes it onto that list.
- xplune 6y ago
  As fun as it sounds, I think aging is what drives humans to progress and evolve. So just in my opinion, I don't think classifying aging as disease is a good idea.
  - fooyc 6y ago
    Are we still evolving, since we usually die much after breeding ?
    - 6y ago

taylorbuley 6y ago

If you're into "service over self" I encourage you to join your local Rotary club. Here are our "four way test" of the things we think, say and do: * Is it the truth? * Is it fair to all concerned? * Will it build goodwill and better friendships? * Will it be beneficial to all concerned? Finding Nash equilibria for #4 isn't easy but it's a good set of guiding principles and if you believe them, you should think about surrounding yourself with others who do too.

torgian 6y ago

I'm not gonna lie, I first read this as "Free from wild potato". Good to see wild polio is going down.

babu_bhaiya 6y ago

Victory

bluedays 6y ago

Oh good, now we only have domesticated polio

hkmurakami 6y ago

For those who are interested and able, Rotary International and the Gates Foundation have been doing a 2 for 1 match for years, tripling your gift towards ending polio. https://www.endpolio.org/home https://www.endpolio.org/home As a past contributor, it brings me great joy to see this milestone today.

AnonHP 6y ago

This has been a very long fight, and there are a few pockets to defeat to declare that we’ve eradicated polio. I see many comments talking about malaria. One of the most effective ways to tackle that is through the work done by organizations, like Against Malaria Foundation (AMF), that are also supported by Effective Altruism based organizations (like GiveWell, Effective Altriusm Funds), etc.). The cost of saving a life from malaria is quite low with this. I would strongly encourage people who donate to charities to donate at least a small amount regularly to AMF or the others mentioned above.

just_throw_away 6y ago

Great we've traded the polio that doesn't make us money for polio that makes us tons of money. Time to celebrate.

imkshax 6y ago

imkshax@gmail.com

ISaIF73 6y ago

Unfortunately this will not change the situation if Africa that much. As the Malthusian Trap is still live there and the cause of the great divergence between the first worl and the third world.

scollet 6y ago
Africa is certainly not a set of countries?

Casereads 6y ago

What about the other side effects?

scandox 6y ago

Just read a biography of Jonas Salk and a major portion of it is devoted to the issue of the oral vaccine (OPV) versus the injected vaccine (IPV). Salk spent a large portion of his later life pressing for the OPV to be delicensed because he considered any risk of live vaccine infecting immuno-suppressed persons or of the weakened virus becoming reactivated unacceptable. As I understand it the OPV was still in use in the US until 1999. It was an interesting case study in the different forces that kept a vaccine proven to cause some cases of Polio every year in use.