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Not even too long ago, humans were plagued with disease all the time. It was just a part of life.
Now, we have lots of ways to fight and kill diseases that killed thousands, and many of them are almost eliminated.
Which ones are there? Well, here are just a few diseases that, hopefully, your kids will never hear of.
- Measles. Highly contagious and with the potential of serious complications such as blindness, encephalitis, and severe diarrhea, measles is one of those nasty diseases that just doesn’t let go. Children who get measles often have immune problems for years afterwards. Luckily, the vaccine protects against this, and despite some outbreaks caused by parents refusing vaccination for their children, it’s eliminated in most affluent countries.
- Polio. Most Americans only know polio as a distant memory, or as something we read about in history books. Most cases of polio go undetected, but one in 200 cases leave the sufferer with permanent disabilities. Those cases see polio eating at the nerve fibers in the spinal cord, brain stem, or motor cortex. 5 to 10 percent of patients who are paralyzed by polio die when it attacks muscles that control breathing. Polio cases globally have dropped almost 99% since 1988 due to the vaccine.
- Elephantiasis. This disease has a much cooler treatment, and one that just won the Nobel Prize. The medicine wipes baby parasites from the blood of those infected and stops it from spreading to new mosquitoes. When done in an area for five years, it can completely wipe out the disease. This is important since it’s a disease that often goes unnoticed until adulthood, even if they’re infected as children.
- Rubella. This disease is seen at its worst in fetuses in the first trimester. If you’re a child or adult, rubella just means a rash and a cold. But for a fetus, rubella can mean future deafness, blindness, and severe brain damage. Due to the vaccine, rubella was declared eliminated from the Americas (US, Cuba, Canada, Central and South America) last month.
