In my last post, I wrote about the fantastic news that family planning is making a comeback in the international development and public health scene. But family planning isn’t the only thing that’s shown signs of revival over the past few weeks. Polio, which was eradicated from Uganda in 1996, is creeping its way back into Uganda via Sudan.

So far 7 cases have been reported in Uganda. The disease, which is transmitted by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the virus, is an import from Sudan. Poor sanitation around the Kampala-Juba highway, and increased cross-border traffic have contributed to its spread.

A polio-infected child presents with acute fever accompanied by weakness in the limbs, and can eventually lead to crippling and paralysis. The good news is the disease is preventable with a simple immunization, and key public health players in Uganda have already rolled out a campaign to increase polio vaccinations, especially in high risks districts. It would be tragic if this disease is not successfully contained and it instead spreads like wildfire throughout the country. Let us hope that Uganda’s efforts to eradicate polio in the 1990s are not undermined by the current situation.

Back to the FP comeback, there was a fabulous op-ed in the New York Times today that has been circulating on many-a-FP/RH-listservs. The piece, by Nicholas Kristof, frames family planning as a pre-requisite to poverty alleviation, maintaining we will lose the global fight against poverty if we do not step up efforts to increase family planning around the world. Echoing my previous post, the author talks about how FP efforts have lost momentum in the past years, and some of the reasons for its demise, namely the bad rep gained from coercive FP campaigns in China and India, the politics of abortion, and the difficulty of changing a behavior that is intimately entangled in social norms, cultural norms, gender norms, and contraceptive logistics systems. He goes on to talk about evidence that an opportunity is coalescing to regain lost momentum in global FP efforts.