World Polio Day (24/10)

World Polio Day, celebrated annually on October 24, is dedicated to the prevention of one of the most severe viral diseases affecting the human nervous system and causing paralysis, paresis and atrophy of muscle tissue, leading to death or disability. World Polio Day).

The disease, which can develop at any age, but affects mainly children under 5 years of age, has long been a real nightmare for parents in many countries around the world. The vaccine against it appeared in the 1950s. It was developed by American virologists and epidemiologists Hilary Koprowski, Jonas Edward Salk, Albert Sabin in close cooperation with Soviet virologists and epidemiologists M.P. Chumakov and A.A. Smorodintsev.

First, Koprovsky created a vaccine based on a weakened (attenuated) polio virus. This happened in 1950. Further in the mid-1950s (a few years after Koprovsky’s discovery) J. E. Salk created an inactivated vaccine. Following him A. Sabine managed to obtain weakened forms of the polio virus, on the basis of which he was in the USA, and Chumakov and Smorodintsev in the USSR created their own oral vaccines.

The start of vaccination of children contributed to a reduction in incidence by almost 99%. Currently, most developed countries have developed comprehensive vaccination of children with inactivated and oral vaccines to combat polio.

The date of World Polio Day is timed to coincide with the birthday of the American scientist J. E. Salk, who created an inactivated polio vaccine.

The success of comprehensive childhood vaccination led to the creation of the Global Polio Elimination Initiative in 1988 (GILP). Global Polio Eradication Initiative, GPEI). Under the auspices of the World Health Organization, volunteer doctors deliver the vaccine to the most remote corners of the world and vaccinate children against the terrible disease.

Every year on October 24, with the participation of WHO, as well as the support of UNICEF, medical institutions take part in preventive and educational events dedicated to World Polio Day. Holding symposia, lectures, distributing visual material, as well as appealing to the international community not to forget about the existence of the polio virus, as well as the consequences caused by this disease – is the main task, as well as planned vaccination of children, which government health authorities should take seriously.

Of great concern among doctors is the increasing number of parents refusing to vaccinate their children. And this despite the fact that there are no drugs against polio, and vaccination can prevent the disease.

The warmest words on this day are heard, of course, by doctors involved in vaccination in hard-to-reach regions and countries where polio has not yet been completely controlled.

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