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All Things Considered on KRVS

Weekdays 4:00-6:00 PM
Robert Seigel & Melissa Block

Live news from National Public Radio.

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News/Talk
Composer ID: 
5182a38fe1c8291eaff68031|5182a37ee1c8291eaff67ff0

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Shots - Health News
12:41 pm
Thu October 18, 2012

With An Army Of Vaccinators, India Subdues Polio

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Credit Julie McCarthy / NPR
An Indian child receives the oral polio vaccine. Twice a year, an army of 2 million volunteers fans out across India to administer the vaccine. India has not reported a single case of polio in more than a year-and-a-half.
Credit Julie McCarthy / NPR
Dr. Kiran Kathuria (left) and veteran volunteer Santosh Sharma (front right) make the rounds with a team of vaccinators in Nehru Nagar, a middle-class area of Delhi. India's nationwide polio eradication program, begun in 1995, was modeled after Delhi's.
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Originally published on Thu October 18, 2012 7:31 pm

All this week, we've been examining the world's last remaining pockets of polio, a disease for which there is no cure. India marked a milestone when the World Health Organization struck it from the list of polio-endemic countries in February after no new cases were reported for more than a year. From Delhi, NPR's Julie McCarthy reports on how, despite poverty and poor sanitation, the world's second-most populous country is eradicating the disease.

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Shots - Health News
5:18 pm
Wed October 17, 2012

Treatment For Alzheimer's Should Start Years Before Disease Sets In

Credit Charles Dharapak / AP
Alexis McKenzie, executive director of the Methodist Home of the District of Columbia Forest Side, an Alzheimer's assisted-living facility, puts her hand on the arm of resident Catherine Peake.
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Originally published on Thu October 18, 2012 10:12 am

Treatment for Alzheimer's probably needs to begin years or even decades before symptoms of the disease start to appear, scientists reported at this week's Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans.

"By the time an Alzheimer's patient is diagnosed even with mild or moderate Alzheimer's there is very, very extensive neuron death," said John Morrison of Mount Sinai Medical School in New York. "And the neurons that die are precisely those neurons that allow you to navigate the world and make sense of the world."

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National Security
4:58 pm
Wed October 17, 2012

Man Arrested In Plot To Blow Up NY Federal Reserve

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Originally published on Wed October 17, 2012 6:09 pm

A man has been arrested in an alleged terror plot to blow up the Federal Reserve building in New York City. Federal authorities and the New York Police Department collaborated to foil the plot apparently conceived by a Bangladeshi man, Quazi Mohammd Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis. Nafis is said to have conceived the plot. However, authorities learned of the plot and actually provided what appeared to be the bomb. It was inert and there was no threat to the public.

World
4:43 pm
Wed October 17, 2012

Israeli Politicians Look To U.S. For Campaign Funds

Credit Pool / Getty Images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly Cabinet meeting at his offices in Jerusalem in October. A new report shows that Netanyahu raised more than 90 percent of his campaign money in the United States.
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Originally published on Sun October 21, 2012 10:03 am

It's midday in the cafeteria of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, and legislators and their aides are busy wheeling and dealing over lunch.

Gil Hoffman, political analyst for The Jerusalem Post newspaper, surveys the cafeteria floor with an expert's eye.

"Never a dull moment in election season," he says. "This is where the politicians, when there is something really important to get across to the press, this is where they do it; this is where they meet and make whatever political deals they need to get ahead."

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Shots - Health News
4:24 pm
Wed October 17, 2012

How The Taliban Is Thwarting The War On Polio

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Credit Jackie Northam / NPR
Children in a Lahore slum after heavy rains. The slum has a large population of Pashtuns who came from Pakistan's lawless tribal regions; many carry the polio virus with them.
Credit Jackie Northam / NPR
Khan Wali, 21, scrutinizes passing cars for young children at the traffic checkpoint. If a child appears to be younger than 5, the driver must pull over.
Credit Jackie Northam / NPR
Wali marks a child's finger with ink after administering the polio vaccine. Children need to be inoculated multiple times in order to be fully immunized against the virus.
Credit Jackie Northam / NPR
Social mobilizers like Awaiz Amjad (right) walk through dense slums and go door to door inoculating children. Many children are malnourished, with weak immune systems.
Credit Jackie Northam / NPR
Amjad checks a child's fingernail to see whether he has been inoculated in a Lahore slum. It can be dangerous work: Some vaccinators have been attacked, and one was killed in a Karachi slum this summer.
Credit Jackie Northam / NPR
Health care workers take samples of sewage water to check for the polio virus in Rawalpindi, a city near Islamabad known to be at high-risk for polio.
Credit Jackie Northam / NPR
A child is inoculated with the polio vaccine at a traffic checkpoint just outside Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Last year, Pakistan had the highest number of polio cases — 198.
Credit Jackie Northam / NPR
Social mobilizer Omer Feroze makes his way through a Lahore slum as part of an effort to educate people about polio and dispel any rumors about the vaccine. Misconceptions about the vaccine are rife within the country's population.
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Originally published on Wed October 17, 2012 7:26 pm

Pakistan is one of the remaining corners of the world where polio still lingers. Last year, the government declared a national emergency, and with the help of international institutions, embarked on an aggressive vaccination campaign.

So far, the results have been promising. The number of new polio cases is about a third of last year's total of 198.

But the new campaign, like previous efforts, hasn't been able to overcome one critical problem: getting into parts of Pakistan's lawless tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan to vaccinate the children there.

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