Tag: grand plan
The Vaccine Loophole in Polio Eradication
In 1988, the World Health Assembly announced a very ambitious goal: Polio was to be vanquished by the year 2000. It was a reach, sure, but feasible. Although highly infectious, polioviruses affect only people, and don’t hide out in wild animals; with two extraordinarily effective vaccines in regular use, they should be possible to snuff out. Thanks to a global inoculation campaign, infections had, for years, been going down, down, down.
But 2000 came and went, as did a second
To Prepare for Climate Change, Build With Mud
When Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, came to Senegal last February for an economic summit, he took a break from conference rooms in the capital city of Dakar to get his hands dirty, literally, as he learned to make compressed-earth blocks from a mix of iron-rich soil, sand, water, and a bit of cement. His block-making tutorial was part of a groundbreaking event for a cultural institute promoting German-language study. The institute’s new building was designed by the distinguished Burkina Faso–born