After years of scientists making vaccines that stopped some deadly sicknesses and diseases, a hand-full of them decided to make a comeback for 2023.
Polio
Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a deadly disease that can affect a person’s spinal cord, which causes paralysis. Scientists discovered vaccines for polio that have been worldwide for decades. Before, there were only two countries that still had polio due to anti-vaccinators, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Lots of health workers risk their lives to this day just to deliver polio vaccines for the children living there. Anyone travelling to or from Pakistan has a high risk of spreading Polio. This is happening in places like New York and London. With big cities like this, you have people from all over the world that you don’t know if they are sick or not. This is leading to polio making a comeback in major cities.
Measles
Measles, or Rubeola, is a viral infection that can be serious for small children. It is one of the most contagious viruses people can get. Due to measles vaccination discoveries in 1963, measles diagnosis’ have become more and more rare. But recently in Ohio, 82 measles cases have been reported resulting in 32 of them being hospitalized. The children that have been diagnosed are all unvaccinated. Since covid has started, the measles cases have decreased. This didn’t last too long, after three years of no cases, 22 measles cases were reported in 2022-all of which were unvaccinated children-.
Monkeypox
Monkeypox, or mpox, is a viral disease that has spread to humans and even some animals started out in central and west Africa, now spread across the globe. Over the course of six months starting in May of 2022, over 83,000 cases of monkeypox were confirmed. As of right now, about 25 people worldwide have died from monkeypox. After vaccines, treatments and community prevention methods were established, numbers of cases started to decrease. In 1980, the smallpox vaccine was created. This caused people to gain immunity to monkeypox for a couple years. But over the years the smallpox vaccination routine was slowly stopped resulting in monkeypox to spread. In May of 2022, 74 countries in all continents except Antarctica were infected with monkeypox. On July 23, 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
