New Delhi: The World Health Organization (WHO) declared India free of the crippling polio virus on Thursday, making the country’s almost two-decade-long, multi-billion-dollar effort one of the biggest public health achievements in recent times.
India’s last case of the wild polio virus was detected in January 2011 in a two-year-old girl in the state of West Bengal. Three years without any new cases means a country can be certified as polio-free.
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the only countries in the world left where the virus remains endemic, largely due to violent conflicts, weak health systems and poor sanitation.
In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative – led by governments and supported by organizations such as WHO, Rotary International and UN Children’s Fund – was launched to ensure comprehensive, nationwide vaccination in endemic nations.
More than 350,000 children across 125 countries were being paralyzed or killed by polio every year at that time. That figure has since reduced by 99.9 percent and in 2013, just 406 cases of polio were reported.
As a result, over 170 million children are now immunized every year, with millions more targeted in house-to-house visits in a drive which has cost the government USD 3 billion since 1995.
In 2009, 741 Indians fell sick with polio, nearly half the world’s cases that year. The number dropped to 42 in 2010 and only one in 2011.
In Pakistan – the only country where polio cases are increasing – gunmen frequently attack polio workers, accusing them of being Western spies and part of a plot to sterilize Muslims. Earlier this month, militants killed 12 members of the security escort for a polio vaccination, detonating a roadside bomb before opening fire on their convoy.
In neighboring Afghanistan, a three-year-old girl was found in February to have contracted the first case of polio in the country’s capital Kabul since 2001.
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