Noted with a troubled heart

I'm not sure of my feelings about this: It's such good news but in another way so frustrating and sad.

Kano, Nigeria (AFP, September 10) - A week-long polio immunisation initiative in northern Nigeria's Kano state ended with health officials optimistic of 75 percent coverage of the four million children targeted. ...

Gerrit Berger, spokesman in Nigeria for the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, who monitored the immunisation exercise in Kano, was happy with the cooperation of parents and was optimistic that polio could be eradicated if the current parental cooperation continued. ...

Health workers in Kano and seven other northern states with high rates of polio infection began Monday a week-long polio immunisation campaign of children under five for the second time since Kano lifted an 11-month ban on polio vaccines, which Muslim clerics in the state claimed contained substances that could render girls infertile.

I remember polio. I remember it well. I remember my uncle, stricken with it as a child who lived his life as an invalid, unable to dress himself or move from one place to another. I remember when iron lungs were the only hope for many. I was too young to realize it at the time, but I learned later what a miracle the Salk vaccine was thought to be. The possibility of the eradication of the scourge of polio from any area of the globe is just wonderful to contemplate.

But dammit dammit dammit, we've had the Salk vaccine since 1952. We've had the even more effective Sabin vaccine since 1956. We have been able to immunize people against polio for 50 years - why in hell is there a need now, today, for "immunization initiatives" anywhere? If there is anything that in one single item would demonstrate the disgraceful, inhuman, misuse of resources and energies that marks our world, awash in arms and blood on the one hand and preventable hunger and disease on the other, this could well be it.