The 25th anniversary meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation in the Kyrgyz capital may offer a glimmer of hope that international relations do not need to be defined by endless confrontation, writes KENNY COYLE
Latest editorial
The bumpy road to polio eradication
After a four-decade worldwide battle with the disease, only Pakistan and Afghanistan now have reported cases of the disease. ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and JOEL HELLEWELL explain the science behind driving polio to extinction
The polio vaccine being given orally in India
The artist, who has just died, is embedded in the subconscious of the Palestinian people
The five young men killed in the A66 crash were responsible for a devastating tragedy — but the crash should force us to ask difficult questions about wider society, argues RENATA MEDEIROS MIRRA
Britain funds the policing of black culture 16 times better than the culture itself. The Diamond Jubilee is the moment to end that, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE
Despite Andy Burnham’s declaration defending the continued partition of the island, all major international and internal trends are converging to make Irish reunification inevitable
Humans are part of the ‘animal kingdom’ – and of nature in general – but also distinct from it and labour (work) is part of what makes us unique, declared Engels. His insights 150 years ago into how our species came to be and how we differ from the rest of nature, are as important today as they were then, says the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights general secretary GAWAIN LITTLE discusses the impact of the US-Israeli war on the Iranian people and economy
ERADICATION is the final frontier in suppressing disease. Once truly eradicated, a disease is no longer a threat to people because there are simply no reservoirs of “wild” viruses left to infect anyone. If it were an organism, the virus would be called extinct in the wild. Eradication is extremely ambitious. Only two diseases have ever been globally eradicated by humans — smallpox in 1980 and rinderpest (a disease of cattle) in 2011 — but finally polio is on the brink.
Over the past 40 years, a worldwide public-health campaign has administered billions of doses of oral polio vaccine, bringing the number of cases of wild poliovirus down from about 400,000 cases per year in 1980 to just 33 last year.
In 2018, Pakistan and Afghanistan were the only two countries in the world to report cases. The final stages of eliminating a disease are the hardest and require the most intense effort because stopping the last few infections is crucial to stop the disease bouncing back. Understandably, near-elimination is also the time when people are most likely to take their foot off the gas, because the disease is no longer such a noticeable problem.
Similar stories
As thousands die in the eastern DRC, a global health emergency is being starved of funds, says S KRISHNASWAMY
Poverty, refugee displacement, child labour and militia violence are exacerbating the challenge of health workers to limit this deadly contagious disease. CONSTANT SAME BAGALWA and MARK BANCHEREAU report
