Have YOU Been Vaccinated?

This week the blog assignment is to write about vaccines. You should have Connect assignments to read and review Chapter 18.1 and 18.2. In your blog this week, discuss the IPV and the OPV, as well as what is happening with Polio in the world in the last 6 months.

You probably know about Franklin D. Roosevelt, but did you know he had Polio? Poliomyelitis is another one of those diseases that can be completely eradicated, but since some people refuse to get vaccinated or just don’t know much about it, it’s still killing people. Polio causes paralysis, as the virus spreads through the brain and spinal cord, and eventually leads to death, so why wouldn’t we be getting said vaccine? There are 2 vaccines for this disease, giving us double protection basically! One is an inactivated virus, IPV, and the other being an attenuated virus, OPV. Young children who have not been vaccinated are at the highest risk, so get your children vaccinated… now.

So, what’s the difference in the two vaccines, why do we need both? Both are fighting off the virus flooding through your body. Well, some countries are no longer using OPV, which is taken orally and does not need a healthcare facility. For the countries that still have OPV, they use both IPV and OPV. The IPV vaccine is adding an additional protection to the poliovirus and strengthens the immune system even more. OPV is the first, preventative measure against the infection, so why are some people just taking IPV and some people taking both? There’s not a lot of evidence proving that taking both OPV and IPV is better than just taking IPV, so why waste the money?

As of late, the UN is paying extra attention to the disease and is putting in a lot of effort to completely eradicate the disease, since it is possible. Polio is quite a problem because there is no cure after someone contracts it, which is why the whole contraction part needs to be stopped immediately. It is passed between people through direct contact and is highly prevalent in Afghanistan. According to the UN News, 1/3 of children are not getting their vaccines, which has caused a reemergence of the disease. Workers of the UN are literally knocking on people’s doors, and creating booths at train and bus stops to get everyone vaccinated, obviously getting pretty serious about it. People are hard at work to stop polio from spreading, and so far it seems to be working.

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