Friday, March 23, 2012

Blog #9 India's Success Fighting Polio Motivates Rival Pakistan


It is known that there is some underlying rivalry between the countries of India and Pakistan. Recently India has managed to eradicate Polio from its country. Polio is a viral disease that can affect nerves and can lead to partial or full paralysis. Pakistan has taken note of this and has used this information as a sense of motivation for them to do the same. Just last month marked the year anniversary of India being completely free of the viral disease. Ironically within that same year, Pakistan recorded a total of 180 new polio cases, making them the leading carrier of any other country. Remarkably efforts have already been put in motion to tackle this ferocious disease. They have managed to construct polio vaccination teams that visit poor housing areas to immunize every child. Pakistan holds eradication campaigns at national or regional levels eight times a year. I feel as if this is a very positive leap that they have taken in the eradication process. I also feel that it is ideal and smart for them to start the vaccinations with the children, seeing as they are the most susceptible to contracting the disease and they are the future to the country. After families have been vaccinated the outside of their houses are then marked with chalk to make note of it, but they are then gone back to afterwards to be checked and rechecked. This is a very good tactic as well because it is very important to make sure that the disease does not come back which it has the opportunity to do. It gives a sense of security to the people of Pakistan because it’s as if they are making it known that they do care about the long term effects of their health. Because of the ongoing competition between India and Pakistan positive outcomes have been produced from it all. The rivalry has managed to play a role in the unionization of Pakistan’s government and people to focus on a national emergency. 

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Indias-Success-Fighting-Polio-Motives-Rival-Pakistan--143461176.html

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