India Marks Milestone In Global Fight To Eradicate Polio

Rukhsar Kahatoon was 18 months old when she was diagnosed with polio exactly one year ago, on January 13, 2011. Today Rukhsar is a healthy 2 1/2 year old living in Howrah, close to Kolkata, West Bengal. She’s also the last recorded case of polio in India.

That India, a country which until a few years ago reported as many as 100,000 cases of polio a year — more cases than anywhere else in the world – has been polio-free for a year, is a palpable milestone in the fight to eradicate the disease globally.

“India is a major, major victory,” Dr. Hamid Jafari, who leads the World Health Organization‘s polio eradication efforts in India, told NPR’s Shots blog. “It has established the feasibility beyond doubt of eradication. (If) it can be done under such tough conditions in India, this can be done anywhere else.”

Polio attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis. Children under age five are most vulnerable. Until the early 1950′s, when Dr. Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine, the disease crippled more than a thousand children every day.

“It shows we’re going to get it done elsewhere,” John Hewko, CEO of Rotary International, which has spearheaded the global polio fight for three decades, said on MSNBC.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been at the forefront of the battle, along with Rotary International and the World Health Organization (WHO). As Bill Gates pointed out, the India case demonstrates the disease can be halted “when countries combine the right elements – political will, quality immunization campaigns, and an entire nation’s determination.”

Worldwide polio cases have fallen by 99% since 1988 when the WHO launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. At that time, the disease was endemic in 125 countries. By contrast, there were only 620 new cases worldwide last year. Today’s India milestone also means polio is now endemic in only three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Despite the victory, global eradication is still an uphill battle. Comprehensive immunization is the only way to prevent the disease. New cases have cropped up in China, where the cases were imported from Pakistan, and Chad, where they came from Nigeria, according to the NPR report.

Experts will cull through the data from India in the coming weeks to ensure they haven’t missed any cases. “If all the data comes in clear over the next few weeks, then India, for the first time, will show up as an unshaded area on WHO polio maps,” Sona Bari of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative said. “This is a great start to the year for India.”

As NPR noted, “The lessons from India will be sifted for years to come. But it’s clear that conquering polio in that nation of 1.2 billion people is as much a story of massive persuasion as it is one of medical science.”

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Photo credit: ramesh_lalwani via flickr

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Estelita A.

10:26PM PST on Feb 22, 2012

WOW. VERY GOOD.

send a green star

Peter M.

4:12AM PST on Jan 19, 2012

noted

Suzanne L.

1:52PM PST on Jan 18, 2012

Polio never completely went away. It was halted in North America and most of Europe through comprehensive immunization programs. In other parts of the world these programs never got off the ground before. CHEERS TO INDIA FOR THIS ACCOMPLISHMENT. As the article says new cases crop up where there are unprotected people. This could happen in the U.S. and Canada too. The way people travel around the world today we are still vulnerable if not immunized.

Brian M.

11:50AM PST on Jan 17, 2012

I suspect they used medical science to accomplish this and NOT any of the tripe written by Deepak Chopra.

Tim L.

6:41AM PST on Jan 17, 2012

Again as a polio survivor I am not really sure how it came back. I always thought the vaccines had eliminated it. Is this "reappearance" due to people not being vaccinated - for whatever reason? (choice - DUMB! - or no access to the vaccine)? For decades we never heard of it - and then 10 or 15 years ago I remember reading about it coming back. If you are offered (or your kids are) the vaccine - take it. There are (to the best of my memory) three levels of polio - the least serious (the one I had) which left me with severe scoliosis and minor health issues - the medium grade (which cripples you) and the severe type (which kills). Once you have one grade you are apparently immune to that level - but without the vaccine you can still get the others. I remember the fear that circulated when the "bug" was around. You think SARS is bad? HAH

Sam M.

5:15AM PST on Jan 17, 2012

I had a friend at school who suffered with polio and was in a wheelchair, so we were all aware of the ravages it could cause. It's good to hear that at last it may be possible to eradicate it in the near future.

Arild W.

3:25AM PST on Jan 17, 2012

Great news.

Jose Ramon F.

9:14AM PST on Jan 16, 2012

Congratulations India!

Portland N.

8:05AM PST on Jan 16, 2012

My grandfather’s first wife was stricken with polio and was left bedridden the last 10 or so years of her life. I believe she already had two sons and was pregnant or had been recently pregnant when she got polio.

After her passing, my grandfather married again and had 12 more children, of which only eight survived and grew into adulthood.

After my grandfather died, one of my uncles—I am obviously a grandchild of the second marriage—packed up his belongings and ran into a box of old fashioned photographs. There were all his pictures of his first marriage with Tillie, his beloved first wife. My uncle saw a very happy, humorous young man and not the serious man that raised him. He had to share the photos with the rest of his siblings. All my aunts and uncles, including my father, marveled over the adorable and very much “in love” young man.

I believe that was when they all finally, truly understood the impact polio had on their father and their lives.

Rossy O.

10:47PM PST on Jan 15, 2012

Dieter R.
'One size did fit all' with our family, 2 of them had contracted polio, we (Mum and other 5 children) were given the medication and none of us contracted it.
I made sure my children were covered, when I grew up, as I can still visulize my sister and dad, and what they went through.
God bless the work you are doing in India and I pray other countries will be free of polio as well. I believe India still has a huge problem with leprocy. Lets hope this too can be made a distance 'history' illness.