NEPA Vital Signs - Winter Spring 2018 - 5

WINTER/ SPRING 2018

Letter from the Editor

lose your eyes for a moment. American life since 2003. No one in America
Imagine six people you hold has died of Polio since 1995.
dear to your heart.
These statistics are staggering, so impresNow, imagine one of them gone, felled sive that the Centers for Disease Control
by a disease that spread like fire on the and Prevention lists vaccines as one of the
wind, destroying most everything - and Top 10 Achievements in Public Health for
everyone - in its path.
the last century.

DONNA M. EGET, D.O.

That's the situation Bostonians found themselves
in just a hundred years ago,
when Smallpox came to New
England and left with the
lives of one in six of the people who were infected with
the virus. It sounds dreadful,
but historically speaking,
the people of Boston were
lucky. Throughout history,
Smallpox has claimed one in
three, taking 300 million souls
in the twentieth century alone.

THESE STATISTICS ARE
STAGGERING, so impressive

that the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention lists
vaccines as one of the Top
10 Achievements in Public
Health for the last century.

Chances are, you don't know anyone
who's been afflicted with this dreadful
disease. That's because there have been
no cases of Smallpox in the world in the
past forty years!
How did a disease that killed hundreds
of millions only two centuries ago cease to
exist today? The answer is simple: a vaccine.

DONNA EGET, D.O., IS A BOARD
CERTIFIED EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN.
SHE IS THE OWNER AND MEDICAL
DIRECTOR OF MEDICUS URGENT
CARE IN DUNMORE.

We still have work to do, though. Lyme,
though it kills only a few people each year,
debilitates hundreds of thousands. Human
Papilloma Virus (HPV) kills 400,000 each
year, mostly in the form of cervical and
throat cancers. These deaths are tragic,
because they are preventable. Hepatitis C
kills 700,000 annually. And how about AIDS?
Although treatment of AIDS has reduced
deaths, a million people still die of this
dreaded disease each year. Thirty-five million have died since the start of the epidemic
in 1981. Yes, there is still work to do.

Thanks to the world-wide efforts of governments, scientists and medical workers,
Smallpox lives only in laboratory vials, safely
hidden away from those you love. Other
diseases have been rendered near obsolete as
Now, close your eyes again. Imagwell. Measles, which killed 7,500 American ine a world where these diseases no
children in 1920, and Diptheria, which took longer exist. I can see it in my mind. It's a
13,000 citizens that year, haven't taken an wonderful place.
Donna M. Eget, D.O.
Editor
NEPA Vital Signs

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NEPA Vital Signs - Winter Spring 2018

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