Tag: polio

The Taliban-run Afghan public health ministry announced Sunday the start of a four-day nationwide polio vaccination campaign aimed at inoculating children under age 5. For the past three years before taking control of Afghanistan, the Taliban had barred U.N.-organized vaccination teams from doing door-to-door campaigns in parts of the country under their control. The group

polio, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The others are the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Suriname, and Venezuela. Another two countries, Haiti and Bolivia, are at very high risk, PAHO member Luiza Helena Falleiros, MD, PHD, pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at the Metropolitan University of Santos in Brazil, said during the October 19

Pakistan says Facebook will help the country in its fight against polio after authorities blamed anti-vaccine content posted last year on the social network site for a leap in the number of cases. Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio has not been eradicated, but a years-long effort began to show fruit with

Credit: CC0 Public Domain The Philippines has detected its first case of polio since 2001, officials said Thursday, putting some of the blame on mistrust stoked by a dengue fever vaccine scandal. Health authorities said a three-year-old girl in a southern province had contracted polio, while the virus was also detected in Manila’s sewage and

The World Health Organization says the ongoing attempt to eradicate polio remains a global emergency amid an increase in cases for the first time in years and a worrying number of outbreaks sparked by the vaccine. After an expert meeting convened by the U.N. health agency this week, experts said Friday that failing to wipe

More and more cases of a rare polio-like illness are being reported across the country, according to news reports. In recent weeks, six cases of the illness, known as acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), have been diagnosed in children in Minnesota — a state the typically sees less than one case of AFM per year, according