How anti-vaxxers fuel the spread of polio – Keren Landsman – Aeon

"We had to convince people with healthy children to vaccinate them again, not for their own safety, but for the public good"
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Fascinating read., a first person account of battling polio from the front lines and the damage done by anti-vaxxers in destroying "herd immunity.". Shows the importance of global organizations such as WHO,,,

Polio should have been eradicated long ago, at least in the developed world. After all, we’ve had a good, efficient vaccine for 60 years. So why is polio still here? And what is it doing in my country?

Israel is the original start-up nation, powered by high-tech and science, with some of the most sophisticated medical research in the world. We have come a long way from the 1950s, when polio was still with us and the signature experience was living on a Kibbutz. We are a modern, wired nation, but we forgot one thing: we still live in the Middle East. We have great weather, plenty of sunshine, lovely beaches, and two relatively nearby countries – Pakistan and Afghanistan – where the wild polio virus still roams free.

Shortly before polio returned to Israel, it hit the sewers of Egypt, our neighbour to the south, in December 2012. Egypt, like Israel, already vaccinated widely – so someone from Pakistan must have entered Egypt, used a toilet, and excreted polio into the sewer system around Cairo, probably infecting some Egyptians along the way. Egyptian physicians could find no cases of polio paralysis, the most devastating outcome of the disease, and that made sense: 95 per cent of people infected with polio show no symptoms and never become sick. But Egypt knew paralysis would be next if the virus was allowed to spread. So Egypt fought back. A nationwide campaign was initiated, and more than 14 million Egyptian children were vaccinated against polio. Within a month, the Egyptians had vanquished polio from its sewers and its country, yet again.

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Analysing the situation, the Israeli government looked at the global data collected by the World Health Organization: it turned out that in nations at risk, a combination of the two vaccines could work best. A single, previous IPV shot made of dead virus could protect against the spread of vaccine-associated polio from the live vaccine. The live vaccine, meanwhile, would prevent the virus from taking root in the gut, where it might spread out to infect the vulnerable and exposed.

How anti-vaxxers fuel the spread of polio – Keren Landsman – Aeon