Update to a troubled heart

On Saturday, I noted my distress that after 50 years after effective vaccines were developed, there was still a necessity for special campaigns of immunization against polio.

While I'm still distressed by that, I should note that the effort is continuing and every step, however small, still protects more lives from the ruination polio can inflict.

From AllAfrica.com for September 15, quoting The Analyst (Monrovia, Liberia):

Another polio eradication campaign begins in October and November with about 819,000 children below the age of five years expected to be vaccinated, health officials and their sponsors told newsmen Wednesday evening.

Liberia had been on the verge of being declared polio-free. But the recent upsurge in fighting in the country destroyed the health infrastructure need to nail down the success, leading Health Minister Peter Coleman to say "It is unfortunate that Liberia finds itself, after almost three years of no new case of polio in this country. We find ourselves constrained to carry out another exercise in the sub-region."

UNICEF Representative to Liberia Angela Kearney was a trifle more blunt.

She said it was criminal for the international community not to eradicate polio.

Damn straight, Ms. Kearney, damn straight.

More stories about the efforts to defeat polio in Africa can be found here.