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For many Americans, especially young adults, polio is a disease that not only has no relevance to their lives, they may not even be sure what it is or how it affects the body.

But make no mistake, polioan incurable, extremely contagious, and life-altering diseaseis a daily reality for some citizens in three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. In these places, this killer virus still holds sway, even while polio has long been absent from most countries in the world.

Where Being a Vaccine Worker Can Be Deadly

Globally, there were 223 cases of polio infection reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2012. When we think of how many people are in the world, this number seems almost insignificant, right? Want to eradicate polio? No problem! With a little money and a few volunteers, we can have that off the to-do list by Christmas, right?

Not so fast. What makes polio a virus to watch is precisely because there are so few cases left. In spite of this tiny number of cases, for years, we have not been able to eradicate it. And because we live in an interconnected global society, we still need to be wise about vaccine-preventable diseases, even those not typically found in our hometown. Measles, a disease eliminated from the United States in 2000, still pops up (222 times in 2011) because its imported from other countries.

Polio's Final Strongholds: Where People Mistrust Vaccination

Polio is also a virus we need to pay attention to because it is at the center of grim international news: Efforts to finally get rid of the disease in some of the countries where it continues to exist are putting health workers at risk of death.

There are three types of poliovirus (called p1, p2, and p3). Unfortunately, having immunity to one does nothing to protect you from the other two. The virus is spread through fecal-oral transmission, and sometimes, oral-oral transmission. It typically lives in the pharynx (throat) and the GI tract. A person infected with polio can be contagious for up to ten days before experiencing symptoms, and can shed the virus through feces for up to six weeks after symptoms. For a virus this infectious, thats no good. What is good, however, is that humans (and no animals) are believed to be the only long-term hosts for polio. If we can stop transmission in people, we should be able to eradicate polio once and for all.

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Why 223 Cases of Polio Still Matter