Hoping That for Polio the End Is Indeed Near

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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/health/21POLI.html

Hoping That for Polio the End Is Indeed Near

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Leg braces and crutches: in America, they symbolize polio epidemics long past. But well after the disease had become an abstraction to children here, it remained a reality in other countries.

In 1988, 350,000 children were paralyzed by polio. That year, the World Health Organization began a global vaccination campaign, with the goal of wiping out the disease by the end of 2000.

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The campaign fell short, but not by much: last year, there were only 600 cases spread over 10 countries: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Niger, Somalia, Egypt, Angola, Ethiopia and Sudan. The current goal is to wipe out the disease this year, so that it can be officially declared eradicated by 2005.

International health groups vaccinated more than 575 million children last year. As a special representative of Unicef, the Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado accompanied vaccinators to Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, India and Congo. His photographs document what he and health experts hope will be the end of polio.

The photographs can be seen on the Web at www.endofpolio.org and, until Aug. 16, at Aperture's Burden Gallery in Manhattan at 20 East 23rd Street.


 

 

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