Can we eradicate polio?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 26 December 2019
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Despite heroic efforts to vaccinate against this crippling disease, why does it persist? The fight to eradicate polio is an amazing story: It began with a grassroots movement in the United States and led to a global campaign to wipe out a disease that can cause paralysis and even death. There is no cure, but countless cases have been prevented by an extraordinary campaign to vaccinate every child aged five and under. It’s an operation that requires access to some of the poorest and most remote regions of the world.
But polio was supposed to have been eliminated by the year 2000. Nearly two decades later, new cases are still springing up. Why? Neal Razzell examines the challenges and the triumphs in the effort to rid the world of polio.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Inquiry on the BBC World Service. I'm Neil Riselle. |
| 0:04.4 | Each week four expert witnesses answer one question from the news. |
| 0:09.6 | In 1988 people said enough. |
| 0:15.0 | Enough crippled children. |
| 0:18.0 | Enough lives cut short. |
| 0:20.0 | Enough poor families made poorer. |
| 0:24.4 | Prompted by charities governments around the world put aside their differences and came together |
| 0:29.5 | to make a profound pledge to eradicate polio by the year 2000. So began an epic effort. |
| 0:37.0 | Health officials mobilized millions of people and raised billions of dollars. |
| 0:48.0 | And the number of cases of polio fell dramatically. |
| 0:52.0 | But the year 2000 came and the goal was not met. By 2005 |
| 0:57.7 | polio was still in 20 countries. The campaign's coordinator had to admit. |
| 1:03.0 | We can't predict when it's going to disappear. |
| 1:06.0 | The virus has taught me not to guess. |
| 1:09.0 | Today, with the deadline to eradicate polio almost two decades behind us, people are still getting sick. |
| 1:17.0 | So we're asking, can we eradicate polio? ago. |
| 1:29.0 | Part one, the vaccine. When you have people who are afraid of vaccines, |
| 1:37.0 | rather than afraid of the diseases that those vaccines protect you from, |
| 1:42.0 | that's just complete ignorance. |
| 1:44.7 | Jane Smith is an independent scholar and author of a book about the race to find a polio vaccine in the United States. |
| 1:56.0 | That means they've never seen an epidemic. They have no idea. |
| 2:02.0 | Polio is an ancient virus. They're actually three years. idea. epidemics broke out in rich countries. |
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