Global Disease Eradication: The Race for the Last Child

In this popular science book the authors describe three eradication campaigns that are being or have been conducted: malaria, smallpox and polio. The eradication of malaria campaign was an overwhelming failure: after near-eradication malaria returned with a vengeance: insecticide-resistant mosquitoes and parasites that are becoming more and more drug resistant are at the basis of this failure. But other, organization-related issues played a role as well. The smallpox campaign learned from these failures and was an overwhelming success: since 1977 no person has suffered from naturally acquired smallpox. But the virus has not disappeared altogether: there are still official stocks being kept in USA and Russia (and who knows what countries or rogue organizations have unofficial stocks with which to start biological warfare). Finally polio, where eradication seems so close by, but is so difficult to achieve, not only due to political and social factors, but also because the biology of the disease is so much more complex. The eradication target, originally set for 2000 was first postponed to 2003, but the world still suffeers from a small number of polio cases, which again proves that the last cases are the most difficult to get rid of. This book not only describes the three eradication campaigns and what we can learn from them, but actually also raises the question whether eradication campaigns do not use funds which could be used for much bigger health problems in the countries where the campaigns need the most activities. This will always remain a discussion point, but it was very interesting to learn about the different views and to compare the different approaches, strategies and experiences with my own experience in the field of leprosy, where we are not even aiming at eradication but at "elimination as a public health problem", a target we have not been able to achieve in 15 years...