Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Blog # 5 Finding A Joint Front Against Polio


According to the recent article, “Finding a Joint Front against Polio”, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the two main countries that are affected from Polio Disease. Polio is a condition in which it causes paralysis and the atrophy of skeletal muscles that often result in permanent physical disability or deformity. In addition, after many failed attempts to contain the disease both countries have decided to join forces to find a way to wipe out this Polio Disease. Furthermore, the idea to join forces between the two countries was made by the Technical Advisory Board, which was an organization who was responsible for creating new strategies to eliminate the disease on a global level.
Meanwhile, last year Pakistan had the highest count of Polio cases worldwide, coupled with Afghanistan who had only eighty children affected by Poliomyelitis. As a result, the new plan between the two countries was to create a program to vaccinate children who traveled between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hence, the immunization campaign was created with many locations to help prevent the disease from spreading. Also it was created in hopes that if more people were vaccinated that they could reduce the amount of people infected.
On the contrast, Pakistan started to believe that Afghanistan was causing them both economic and social problems and that the Afghans were bringing the disease to local children in Pakistan. Also, many people of both, Afghanistan and Pakistan, refused to get vaccinated and have their children vaccinated as well, due to the fact that they felt the U.S. had something to do with creating the vaccinations campaigns. Generally speaking, they felt that the U.S. was trying to control the Muslim population. As a result, many people did not get vaccinated and increased the risk of both keeping, and spreading the infectious disease.
 With that being said, it seems that if both countries goal was to keep their society safe then they would make sure that each person was properly vaccinated. Also, if Pakistan felt that the Afghans were increasing the risk of spreading Polio, and causing there country economic and social problems maybe they should have not joined forces. However, by joining forces it gives each country an opportunity to decrease the amount of people who become infected with the disease. Above all, Polio is a life threatening disease and if neither country takes the proper measures to help prevent the disease from spreading, it could cause great harm to their society and drastically decrease their population, and eventually even wipe out their country. Clearly, joining forces seems the best route to go, as far as protecting society from this awful disease.  

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