Denial, Oblivion and New Fears: Poliomyelitis and the Post-Polio Syndrome in the Spanish and Portuguese Press (1995-2009)

Abstract

n 1988 the World Health Assembly approved and launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, in which the governments of the member countries took part, as well as UNICEF, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Rotary International and even the WHO, then followed by other organisations such as the United Nations Foundation, the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This ambitious project not only had a strong scientific support regarding their viability, as well it was socially based on the success in eradicating smallpox, officially registered in 1980. The first results were obtained in the Region of the Americas, where the eradication certificate was achieved in 1994. The European Region, the third to achieve it, would have to wait until 2002. The initial optimism, sometimes close to a disproportionate triumphalism, led to the setting of a date for the worldwide eradication of poliomyelitis in the year of 2000, which was then moved to 2005 and further continuously postponed, although with setting a specific year. The situation in 2009 was not encouraging, with cases of polio in 23 countries, some of them countries in which polio had been considered eradicated. The following year would not be better, because although the number of cases decreased and there were only cases in 20 countries, 88.53% of the cases were in countries where polio was not considered endemic. In this scenario, the WHO launched its Strategic Plan 2010–2012 (OMS, 2010). However, continued attempts to achieve the objectives had been frustrated by repeated