WHO: Indien næsten polio-frit efter enorm årelang kampagne

GENEVA, 12 January 2012: India appears to have interrupted wild poliovirus transmission, completing one year without polio since its last case, in a two-year-old girl in the state of West Bengal, on 13 January 2011, WHO reports Thursday.

India was once recognized as the world’s epicentre of polio. If all pending laboratory investigations return negative, in the coming weeks India will officially be deemed to have stopped indigenous (intern/national) transmission of wild poliovirus.

The number of polio-endemic (udsatte) countries, those which have never stopped indigenous wild poliovirus transmission, will then be reduced to a historical low of three: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

However, there remains no room for complacency (tilfredshed). India must maintain sensitive surveillance and high childhood immunity against wild poliovirus to guard against any importation of polio until eradication is achieved globally.

In 2011, Afghanistan and Pakistan have both seen alarming increases in polio cases, and poliovirus from Pakistan re-infected China (which had been polio-free since 1999).

In Africa, active polio transmission continues in Chad, the DR Congo (former Zaire) and Nigeria, with outbreaks in West and Central Africa in the past 12 months reminding the world that as long as polio exists anywhere, it remains a threat everywhere.

Global health leaders have paid tribute to the Government of India for its leadership and financial commitment to the polio eradication effort, and to the millions of vaccinators, community mobilizers, Rotarians, parents and caregivers who have supported polio eradication for more than a decade.

The scale of the eradication effort in India is mind-boggling (svær at fatte):

Each year, more than 170 million children under the age of 5 are vaccinated in two national immunization campaigns, with up to 70 million children in the highest-risk areas vaccinated multiple times in additional special campaigns; the whole effort requires nearly a billion doses of oral polio vaccine annually.

Hundreds of thousands of children will be saved