The Clinical Management of Poliomyelitis a Current View 2020
The Clinical Management of Poliomyelitis A Current View 2020 Hugh G. Watts MD, Editor Contributors: Benjamin Joseph MS Orth, MCh.Orth, FRCS Ed, John Fisk MD, Sharon K. DeMuth DPT, MS, Helen Cochrane MSc. CPO(c), Mathew Varghese MD, Sanjeev Sabharwal MD, MPH Global HELP Organization 1 Preface Many people have been misled to think that poliomyelitis Those many thousands who currently live with paralysis is essentially extinct. While the worldwide incidence of due to polio and AFP still need care. Add to this, those with polio has gone from an estimated 350,000 reported proven the polio-like AFM who also need treatments developed cases in 1988 to 74 cases in 2015 (1) the prevalence of for polio. But as long as the thinking among health workers Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) in children was above becomes fixed in the belief that polio has been eliminated, 50,000 per year in India alone (2). In the past 40 years there or is “just around the corner from being eliminated” the have been persisting sporadic cases. It is critical to be aware many lessons learned over the generations about how those that approximately only one child in 200 who gets the with polio can be greatly helped by appropriate clinical disease develops paralysis (3). The rest show few symptoms techniques will slip into oblivion. The repository of this beyond malaise and diarrhea, which are common symptoms information is now in the hands of an ever-dwindling in childhood and easily overlooked. Thus, for every child number of clinicians in their seventies and eighties who reported to have polio, there may be as many as 199 other have treated such patients in their career.
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