Vaccination programmes are likely to eradicate the crippling polio virus around the globe within four years, health officials claimed yesterday. The virus has been targeted by the World Health Organisation's eradication programme since 1988 and if eliminated will become only the second disease to be wiped out completely, after smallpox, which was officially declared eradicated in 1979.Bruce Aylward at the WHO's Global Polio Eradication Initiative said confidence had been boosted by research that identified ways of dislodging the virus from its last remaining strongholds. The virus is now endemic only in India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. "We will not go into the next decade with polio," Mr Aylward predicted yesterday.
Polio cases have fallen around 99% since 1988, from more than 350,000 cases in more than 125 endemic countries, to 1,951 reported cases in 2005.
This year Kenya reported its first case of polio in 22 years, the latest in Africa since hardline clerics in Nigeria ordered an immunisation boycott amid fears it was part of a US ploy to sterilise Muslims or infect them with the HIV virus.
| Good luck with it, but notice the suspect countries on the list. The rest of the article discusses reasons why the current vaccine isn't working so well in some countries. |