Immunisation Facts

Polio Eradication in India

M. J. Friedrich

JAMA. 2014;311(7):666. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.1055.

 

India has passed the 3-year mark since its last case of wild poliovirus, reported January 13, 2011 (http://bit.ly/1awqY5e). Next month, a commission of experts from the World Health Organization’s South-East Asia Region will analyze laboratory data from the last 3 years to officially determine whether the region is free of polio.

 

Only a few years ago, India had the largest endemic reservoir of polio in the world. The country’s population density, along with its poor sanitary conditions, conspired to make eradicating polio a daunting task. But the Indian government, in collaboration with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and other organizations, deployed an enormous number of workers to immunize children throughout the nation, even in poor, high-risk, and remote areas of the country.

 

Despite this achievement, polio remains a threat until the disease is eradicated throughout the world. It is still endemic in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria, and new cases of the illness have been detected in 2013 in countries such as Somalia and Syria that had not reported cases in many years. These countries all face challenges to polio eradication, including attacks against polio vaccine workers in Pakistan; however, India’s accomplishment in the face of difficult odds demonstrates the possibility of success elsewhere