The guest at our October 9th meeting was Sara Naushad who is a UGRAD scholar from Pakistan. She is spending the fall semester at Coastal Carolina University through a US State Dept sponsored grant.
Sara’s studying Nutritional Sciences, and she also has an internship at Conway Medical Center for the fall learning about food safety and sanitation.
During her speech at our meeting, Sara presented a few facts about polio and Pakistan. For example, polio eradication began in 1994 in Pakistan, meanwhile it was deemed eradicated from the US in 1979. In 1997, there were 1166 cases of polio, but the amount has decreased to below 50 within the last ten years.
However, it has been a struggle to get the number of new cases to ZERO in Pakistan. Sara sited several reasons why total eradication has not occurred, which include 1) no authority to mandate vaccinations, 2) poor funding of the vaccination teams, 3) poor stewardship of coolers used to transport the vaccine, and 4) religious concerns. The age old problem of poor sanitation practices also hinders polio from being totally eradicated.
At the end of her speech, Sara expressed her thanks to Darla Domke-Damonte and those at Coastal Carolina University’s Dept of Public Health for their assistance in hosting her.
Do you enjoy networking? Meeting new people? Getting the opportunity to help others? Breakfast? Come join us! Breakfast is on us! Wednesday at 7 am at the Legends Golf Resort Clubhouse. 1500 Legends Dr, Myrtle Beach, SC 29579.
