Why do we continue to vaccinate diphtheria and polio, diseases that no longer exist in Italy?
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It is true that diphtheria and poliomyelitis are diseases eliminated from our territory, but unfortunately they are not diseases eradicated from the planet. Poliomyelitis is a good model to explain this phenomenon. It is a disease on the threshold of eradication, i.e. the complete disappearance of the virus, but there are still outbreaks of viral circulation in the world. These would be sufficient to restart the global spread of the virus if the vaccine protection threshold were lowered. The declaration of emergency in New York due to the continuous presence of polio virus in sewage, a sign of local circulation, associated with a clinical case of paralytic polio in an unvaccinated American citizen dates back to a few months ago, July 2022.
Poliomyelitis, the virus returns to frighten
by Fabio DiTodaro
Cases like this are reported, fortunately rarely, all over the world. In Italy we don’t hear about it because vaccination coverage rates are particularly high. For diphtheria the situation is decidedly worse because the disease is still endemic in many parts of the world and cases of isolation of the bacterium in Europe are quite frequent. In short, the reasoning is simple: these diseases are no longer scary thanks to vaccination. If we stopped vaccinating, we would quickly step back decades.
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Diphtheria
poliomyelitis
*Pierluigi Lopalco is professor of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine at the University of Pisa
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