Polio is a disease that continues to plague parts of the world. Vaccines exist but are hard to get to certain areas.
Health experts spoke with Sioux Falls Rotarians on the effort to eradicate the disease and how the medical profession is trying to rebuild public trust.
The primary focus at the latest Rotary meeting was the almost complete eradication of the polio virus.
According to experts, the disease continues to exist only in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Ashok Kumar is the District Director of “End Polio Now.” He said if the small remaining amount of wild polio is eradicated, the world would not have to worry about the disease.
“There are only two countries where we have wild polio. If we can eradicate the polio from there, then no child has to be vaccinated in this world. We are spending $1 billion dollars a year to vaccinate all of the children in the world, including this country,” said Kumar.
Kumar said in the United States there is a 93% vaccination rate against wild polio. He said in some limited situations patients can get sick from the vaccination itself, but these are just side effects – and are usually mild.
Ashley Sands is a Pediatric Infectious Disease Specialist at Sanford Health. She said communication is key to rebuilding public trust in the medical field.
“When we are talking to people and trying to relay some of these concerns, it goes a lot better than speaking from the pulpit and just kind of preaching or yelling at people that, ‘I think vaccines are great! You should all get them.’ So having these conversations and getting this information out to the public is, I think, quite helpful. In the hopes that you would then turn around and have a conversation with someone who wasn’t here to say I think this is something that we need to look into,” said Sands.
Although eradication is possible, experts say it will take time to completely expel the disease from the human population.
