South Asia slashes polio cases by nearly half
Authorities committed to 2005 target to end paralysing disease
GENEVA, 4 February, 2004 — The three countries on the Asian continent that still have polio are on target to end the
disease this year, their health authorities said today. Last year, polio cases in Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan were
slashed by 45 per cent. Similar momentum this year should put an end to the transmission of polio in this particularly
crowded corner of the world, which has proven a challenge to global eradication efforts.
Meeting at the World Health Organization’s headquarters in Geneva, the health ministers and senior officials hammered
out a plan for 2005 that involves massive and repeated polio immunization campaigns in the few remaining affected
districts of these countries. The emphasis will be on reaching children in communities traditionally under-served by
health services.
Similar action last year paid off in the shrinking geographic footprint of the poliovirus and in falling numbers of
affected children. Total cases in the region have fallen from 336 in 2003 to 186 in 2004 (reported as of 1 February
2005), while surveillance of the disease in the key districts is twice as sensitive. Vast areas of each country reported
no polio last year. Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai, India's Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi and Pakistani
president Pervez Musharraf all lent their personal support to the 2004 immunization campaigns, during which 210 million
children were given 1.5 billion doses of vaccine.
"The poliovirus is currently cornered in only six of the 51 states and provinces within the three countries," said Bill
Sergeant, Chair of the International PolioPlus Committee of Rotary International, the humanitarian service organization
that championed the charge to eradicate polio and has contributed volunteer power and more than US$500 million. "This is
the year to rid Asia of polio."
Administrative officials from beyond the health services are being pressed into duty: in key areas, teachers, district
administrators, railway workers, and other government employees are mobilizing for vaccination campaigns. Officials also
acknowledged the complementary need to ramp up routine immunization of children to prevent the virus coming back.
India, Pakistan and Afghanistan have increased the power of their surveillance and detection systems for polio virus
this past year, providing even great assurance that polio was at its lowest levels ever during 2004 with 132 children
paralysed in India, 50 in Pakistan and 4 in Afghanistan. Up to 21 additional immunization campaigns across the region in
2005 will involve millions of volunteers fanning out home-to-home from remote villages to the vast metropolitan slums to
reach all children under five years of age.