Polio Eradication Report: '2020 Has Been A Terrible Year' : Goats and Soda - NPR
Polio Eradication Report: '2020 Has Been A Terrible Year' : Goats and Soda - NPR Polio Eradication Report: '2020 Has Been A Terrible Year' : Goats and Soda - NPR Posted: 30 Oct 2020 09:44 AM PDT The multibillion-dollar global effort to eradicate polio hasn't just stalled. It's moving backward. When the Global Polio Eradication Initiative began in 1988, roughly 350,000 kids a year were paralyzed by the virus. By 2016 that number had been driven down to 42 cases of any type of polio anywhere in the world. But now cases are on the rise and expected to climb even further in the coming months. So far this year officials have tallied more than 200 cases of wild polio and nearly 600 cases of the vaccine-derived form of the disease. Most of the vaccine-derived strains of polio are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but now these rogue strains of polio are also turning up across much of sub-Saharan Africa, Yeme...