Today the World Health Organization declared an international emergency around the resurgence of a vaccine-preventable infectious disease that can paralyze a kid within hours. (Or, in the WHO's ominously passive-voice statement: "It was the unanimous view of the committee that the conditions for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern have been met.")
Poliomyelitis is a highly contagious neurologic disease that, in the mid-twentieth century, paralyzed or killed half a million people every year. In the wake of Jonas Salk's 1945 vaccine, the disease was almost completely eliminated. In recent years, international health organizations have painted a picture of inevitability; polio should soon be totally eliminated from earth. This is a Vine from The Gates Foundation last year:
But this morning the WHO committee said the international spread of polio to date in 2014 "constitutes an 'extraordinary event' and a public health risk to other [countries] for which a coordinated international response is essential." Kids aren't getting vaccinated, especially in conflict zones, and adult travelers in endemic areas aren't getting their vaccine boosters. The Geneva-based committee said that more than half of the polio cases in 2013 resulted from international spread.
The WHO named Pakistan, Syria, and Cameroon as the nidi of the viral spread, labeling them "States currently exporting wild poliovirus." Afghanistan, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Israel, Somalia, and Nigeria are named as infected countries that are not currently exporting the virus. The committee recommends that all residents and travelers be re-inoculated against the virus (resident-travelers from polio-infected countries should have received one documented additional dose of the vaccine, four to twelve months before any international travel), and they should be required to carry a standardized proof-of-inoculation document. All children in these countries should be inoculated or re-inoculated.
This isn't to say that polio is imminently taking over the world; the growing numbers are just jarring in the context of the global polio eradication initiative, wherein the WHO, CDC, Unicef, and Rotary International hope to have zero cases of polio by 2018 and discontinue the vaccine in 2019. The initiative has gone so far as to already publish guidelines for after polio has been globally eradicated. In light of the 2014 spread of polio to date, the 2018 goal is dubious. The WHO warned today that "if unchecked, this situation could result in failure to eradicate one of the world's most serious vaccine-preventable diseases."
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