Contagious Diseases Like Polio

809 Words4 Pages
There are many contagious diseases that people can contract and it can instansly become a epanedmic. There are many contagious diseases worldwide according to the Center for Diseases Control, many of them being in the United States. I personally think that the worst one is polio. Polio is a very contagious diseaese. Polio is a crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease caused by a virus that spreads from person to person invading the brain and spinal cord and causing paralysis. Because polio has no cure, vaccination is the best way to protect yourself and the only way to stop the disease from spreading. The spread of polio has never stopped in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. Polio-virus has been reintroduced and continues to spread in Chad and Horn of Africa after the spread of the virus was previously stopped. In the late 1940s to the early 1950s, in the United States alone, polio crippled around 35,000 people each year making it one of the most feared diseases of the twentieth century. By 1979 the country had become polio free. There were 1,195 cases reported in 2006. Polio incidences has dropped more than 99.9 percent since the launch of global polio eradication efforts in 1988. According to global polio surveillance data from October 23, 2013, 301 polio cases have been reported from the following countries: Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan. In 2012 there were 223 cases reported in 5 different countries:Afghanistan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Of the 2012 polio cases, 97% (217 of the 223 cases) were reported from the three remaining endemic countries. Polio is spread when the stool of an infected person is introduced into the mouth of another person through contaminated water or food (fecal-oral transmission). Oral-oral transmission by way of an infected person's saliva may account for

More about Contagious Diseases Like Polio

Open Document