I can’t stress enough how important vaccines are to human health and survival. There are so many horribly life threatening diseases in our everyday environment that are just waiting for an opportunity to take control. For example, poliomyelitis is a disease that attacks the nerve cells of the spinal cord, causing muscle wasting, and if severe enough, paralysis and death. It’s transmitted through contaminated food and water or person to person contact. How often do you eat and drink or interact with people throughout your day?
A LOT!
But, the more unbelievable news is that we have ways to prevent so many of these diseases and never ever have to encounter them or witness their destructive nature. Like ever. Following our polio example, there are two types of polio vaccines currently: IPV (Inactivated Polio Vaccine) and OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine). As it is discussed by The WHO, the IPV vaccine has a killed wild type strain of polio in it that is administered through an injection. With the introduction of the IPV vaccine, polio has been eradicated in many countries and there is evidence to suggest that IPV may successfully inhibit community transmission of poliovirus. The sister vaccine, OPV, is a mixture of three live attenuated poliovirus strains that’s administered orally. Because this vaccine does contain live strains there is an extremely rare chance that the attenuated virus may be able to mutate across generations and cause disease. But, even with this chance, the benefits of any vaccine far outweighs the risks. In the United States we haven’t used the OPV vaccine since 2000, but it is still being used in developing countries.
An article by Vax Before Travel discusses The WHO Emergency Committee’s 23rd meeting surrounding the outbreaks of polio in various countries. Apparently, the committee is very concerned with the number of recent outbreaks of polio, as it is up to 113 cases in 2019 compared to the 28 cases in the same period in 2018. The risk of disease has been increased by weak routine immunization, lack of access, and population movement. We need to continue spreading awareness of diseases and their vaccines until they are fully eradicated. We came so close to wiping this diseases off the face of the Earth, but then we got comfortable about where we were and started slacking. All diseases need is one foot in the door to come back stronger than they were before. We can’t let this happen!
I don’t want polio, you don’t want polio, polio is a no go all around.
microBIOLOGY 