Cory Aquino s Legacy

Photo by Cory Doctorow via Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

An improved measles vaccine became available in 1968.

This has contributed to the spread not only of measles, but also of whooping cough and mumps.

Corey Gilkes, writing at Wired868, also got in on the discussion

The upsurge in cases can be explained largely by the increase in the number of unvaccinated children.

Ferdinand Marcos s main opponent, Cory Aquino, actually boasted of having a direct pipeline to the Lord.

That fear caused a lapse in general vaccinations, and earlier this year in Guinea, there was an outbreak of measles.

We the soldiers and policemen who backed her were reinforced by Cory's steel core of values and principles.

Corey Wallace is the Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies, the Free University of Berlin.

Prayer and spiritual devotion were important components of Cory s daily endeavors and a major influence in her decision making and personal relations. Her inner reserves of faith, indeed, kept her going through every hardship.

Since 2000, measles cases in the US have been attributed largely to travelers bringing the disease into the country.

Epidemiological studies, Cory Slechta explains, typically correct for what are called confounding factors other conditions that might influence the condition being measured.

Building these routine immunization systems has already helped us to eradicate diseases like polio and all but one type of measles.

Vaccines have eradicated smallpox, pushed polio to the verge of eradication, and saved millions of children from measles, diphtheria, tetanus, and other deadly and disabling diseases.

Indeed, before vaccination made measles a rarity, the disease was widely feared, killing thousands of children every year.

The people who contributed to this drop by delivering effective basic health care, building a supply of safe water, or immunizing children against measles remain largely unknown.

The Madonna like status of Cory Aquino in the Philippines was inspiring in the heady days of People Power, but did little to bolster the institutions of a secular democracy.

The resurgence is of the measles a disease that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared eradicated in 2000, thanks to a highly effective and safe vaccine.

Cory Slechta s lab is now working on replicating conditions of stress and chronic deprivation in animal models that would mirror those experienced by communities of poverty.

One such example is the book Overclocked by Canadian sci fi writer and privacy activist Cory Doctorow, which is available for download in multiple formats on his website.

There is no excuse for millions of deaths from malaria, AIDS, TB, polio, measles, diarrhea, or respiratory infections, or for so many women and infants to die in or after childbirth.

The article is republished on Global Voices under a Creative Commons BY NC ND 3.0 license.

The resulting shortcomings in the country s provincial health systems have manifested themselves not just in the inability to eradicate polio, but also in a recent measles outbreak, which has killed more than 300 children.

The daily deaths of children in poor countries from diarrhea, measles, and malaria are part of the background of the world we live in, and so are not news at all.

Measles may have a lower mortality rate than Ebola, but its potential to inflict suffering and death especially on young children remains considerable.

The size of the challenges that we face was made clear at the beginning of this year, when a measles outbreak killed more than 300 children in Pakistan most of whom had not received vaccines.

Ironically, many deaths would be preventable by existing vaccines (such as for measles), but the populations are often too poor to have access to even basic public health. Even in many middle income and higher income countries, there have been surges of new and re emerging infectious diseases, as a result of increased global travel, the opening of new regions to settlement, and the overuse of antibiotics with a resulting spread of disease resistant parasites.

Ironically, many deaths would be preventable by existing vaccines (such as for measles), but the populations are often too poor to have access to even basic public health.

Further adding to this complexity when it comes to brain development are social stresses that act on the same part of the brain region, explains University of Rochester professor of environmental medicine Deborah Cory Slechta.

When it comes to protecting the exquisitely sensitive developing brain, the measures currently used to assess chemical risk and set safety standards fall short, says Cory Slechta.

As the number of people who have witnessed firsthand the effects of measles and other childhood diseases such as mumps, rubella, polio, and whooping cough has declined, so has society s commitment to keeping them away.

We may not have the equivalent of a vaccine for measles or a bed net for malaria, but low cost, highly effective interventions are possible for most people either at risk for, or already suffering from, a mental illness.

Andrew Wakefield first claimed that there was a relationship between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism in 1998. But it soon came to light that he had falsified his evidence, and his research was retracted.