Death, Disease, Opportunists of War
"What conflict does is that it produces that environment, whereby when poliovirus lands it has plenty of opportunity to thrive, circulate and paralyze children."Inoculating vulnerable children against the deadly disease of poliomyelitis has come up square against the pathology of Islamist ignorance equating such remediation with a malignant West's intention to infect Pakistani children with a noxious substance, rather than protect them from a dreadful illness. Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan are hugely afflicted with the virus.
Hamid Jafari, director, Global Polio Eradication Initiative
No fewer than twenty-two vaccinators have been murdered by the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan since December. The Taliban has stated unequivocally that no children are to be vaccinated against any malady, to protect them from the evil intentions of those representing Western interests.
It hasn't helped that a doctor living in Abbottabad next to the bin-Laden compound attempted to procure DNA through the pretense of inoculating the bin-Laden children on behalf of the CIA.
New detection of the polio virus -- spread through feces, attacking the nervous system, capable of causing paralysis within hours and death in up to 10% of its victims -- has been occurring in record numbers. Some 22 children in Syria's northeastern Deir Ezzour province near the border with Iraq have become paralyzed. WHO and UNICEF are attempting to contain the outbreak.
Analysis links the Syrian virus with the one discovered in Israel and Egypt, coming originally from Pakistan. Making it vital in the fight against global infection to attack it at its source, according to Hamid Jafari, director of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The finger of blame points to conflict, points to the migration by committed jihadists to theatres of conflict, bringing with them the virus as a vector.
Ironically, UN peacekeepers who arrived in Haiti from Nepal in response to the need for security after the breakdown of law and order in 2010 resulting from a catastrophic earthquake that devastated the struggling country, brought with them the cholera virus, resulting from inadequate sanitation procedures in the UN camp upstream from Haitian settlements. The outbreak has ended up killing a staggering 8,300 people and leaving 650,000 ill from cholera to the present day.
Now there has been an alert raised that polio may be returning to Europe. Refugee settlements in Turkey and Jordan have seen heightened screening of sewage systems to attempt to combat the situation. Syrian war refugees have also begin arriving in western Europe, including Sweden and Germany.
The Horn of Africa has seen an upsurge in polio cases.
And the fact that most western European countries and the U.S. use a disarmed injection, an inactivated inoculation, scientists warn, might leave them susceptible to the disease breaking out, in contrast to the use of a live virus vaccine, used elsewhere in the world.
Over $10-billion has been invested in an attempt to eradicate polio. Conflict zones appear now to present the greatest risk of infection.
And those who are most injured by the effects of war, children, are most at risk.
Labels: Crisis Management, Disease, Health, Pakistan, Syria
posted by Pieface @ Monday, November 11, 2013
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