Reasons to be cheerful?

Developed in the 1950s, vaccines against the polio virus were used to great effect to reduce the number of cases of polio. One of the most dreaded diseases of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, poliomyelitis bestowed a litany of health problems on the unfortunate people affected.

In 1988, there were 350,000 cases worldwide. By 2012, there were just 223 cases reported globally. It was sad but perhaps not unexpected then to observe that a polio epidemic is gaining momentum in war torn Syria. The irony is that the vaccine is given orally and is really easy to administer. It's heartbreaking to consider that such a simple solution is being denied to the children of that country due to the abhorrent behaviour of the adults. Polio is spread by the faeco-oral route so it's capacity to spread in a conflict such as this one is almost unlimited.

While I point to the problem of polio in war torn Syria, I also balance this observation by reminding myself of the current threat of measles to children in South Wales. There is no war in South Wales. People there do not want for food or shelter and yet we have the bizarre situation of measles cases arising from parental reluctance to immunise their children. Given the misplaced reporting of some local newspapers in that part of Wales, I have a degree of sympathy with some of these parents.

The point here is a wider one. Newspapers such as the Daily Mail pride themselves on their health expertise but frequently cause far more problems for the Health Service than they solve. The press have an enormous responsibility when reporting on matters of health to get their facts right. The same applies to the Lancet who first published the now discredited article linking the MMR vaccine to autism. This is dangerpous stuff.

Back to polio though. There were good news stories as well. The singer Ian Dury (A clever use of the word injury) gave us many memorable songs. As the punk era drew to a close, this former art school student arrived on the new wave music scene with his Blockheads to give us a fusion of punk, jazz and funk. Ian Dury contracted polio as a child growing up in post war London as did many others but managed to lead a successful life in spite of it.http://youtu.be/xoOjtNs9EOk