Health and disease in Syria

The blog topic I chose for the week has to do with Syria. Recently, there have been reports of Polio outbreaks. First, I want to give a brief description of this disease and its effects, to explain why this problem is a social problem.  The disease is commonly known as Polio, but its real medical name is Poliomyelitis. The disease is known as a viral disease which transmitted in an oral to fecal route.  The symptoms of polio are sometimes not always detectable in about ninety percent of the cases, unless the virus enters the blood stream. 

   However, about one percent can experience paralysis, destroying of neurons and muscle weakness. The most common form of polio is Spinal polio, is can cause paralysis in the legs.  In the article, they discuss how there are a reported 22 outbreaks in Syria, and I had to ask myself why would this occur? The war in Syria has caused many refugees about 4,000 to flee to other parts, but the living conditions of these people are the main concern, because living conditions are linked directly to sanitation.  

   The problem is people living in camps and some living in underground location sanitation is a big concern.  The other concern is the amount of people fleeing carrying polio with them, so vaccination needs to be available. According to the article, the root of the problem lies in polio is not curable and three doses of vaccines are to be given to prevent it. The 22 victims were never vaccinated for polio, so that means there were gaps in the amount of people that the polio vaccine reached.

               

          Consequently, due to the war on Syria millions of people have been displaced and people are moving rapidly from one place to another. The main concern is to make sure the neighboring countries have access to vaccinations and that people have sanitary living conditions. The spread of disease is a social problem, because of improper planning. The camps that are set up often have unclean living conditions that spread disease easily.

 When emergencies or wars like the one in Syria displace people there should be safeguards in place such as for when hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disaster events occur. Prevention is the key in keeping diseases like polio and many others from spreading, having somewhere for the masses to go in displacement that is healthy to live until they can get back up on their feet is very important.  The social problem here is that this occurs not only in my example of Syria and Polio, but in many other places with the spread of diseases due to unclean living conditions, and bad access to health care. The main thing to take away from this is that it affects a lot of people around the world and the key is prevention.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/polio-outbreak-syria-22-people_n_4156871.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis

10:00 AM  10/1/13

Emily Vestrat