Polio Rising: There was a rather lengthy article in The Boston Globe today (Link below). It has been reported that polio is rising again this time in Tajikistan. As a polio survivor who contracted paralytic polio in the 1950s and suffered its debilitating effects as a child as well as significant post polio issues as an aging adult, I shake my head in disbelief. Once thought to go the way of small pox the scourge of polio with its accouterments of braces, crutches, casts, surgeries, respirators and more is still with us despite valiant efforts to eradicate it worldwide by Rotary, WHO and other organizations. This hard-to-believe-but-true fact reports polio is still raising its ugly head in Tajikistan and from there it even traveled to Russia. In our trans global age the World Health Organization is concerned it will travel easily to other nation states as well. This among many other reasons makes me say God bless America. Truly, even on our worst days, it is better to live here than almost anywhere else. Vaccination against polio is mandatory and should remain so. Efforts to help countries which are plagued by war, religious and other obstacles of superstition and myth, helping to prevent vaccination of their people against this dreaded disease, must be overcome.

I criticize US foreign and domestic policy sure but one cannot deny the fact that people overcome Herculean obstacles to get here. They must be doing that for a reason. Perhaps, despite our shortcomings, it is better -- a LOT better -- here than many other places on earth. Articles about the hideous disease of polio again rising in the underdeveloped world and even in the not so underdeveloped world never ceases to bring that point home to me!

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2010/0 /05/tajikistan_outbreak_sets_back_effort_to_end_polio/