New Delhi - Today marks the one-year
anniversary of the last known case of polio in India, officials
proudly but cautiously announced. This leaves the countries of
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria as the only ones with major cases
of polio.
Health advocates, who hoped the disease
would be destroyed by the year 2000, feel elated about the news,
though they are still cautious. Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad
warned that India needed to push forward with its vaccination
campaign to ensure the elimination of any residual virus.
"We are excited and hopeful. At
the same time, vigilant and alert," he said in a statement.
Through Nata Menabde, the head of India's World Health Organization,
the organization stated "We are all subject to relaxing a bit
when we have achieved some goal but we simply cannot allow that to
happen with polio. The important point is that while India may have
stopped transmission of wild polio virus, it does not prevent such a
virus from being re-imported or in fact the virus could be around and
it has just not been detected.”
Overall however the 2.4-billion dollar
plan has proven to be a large success. In 2010 there were 42 cases
throughout the country, down from 742 in 2009. In 2011 there was
only one case of the disease, a two-year-old girl named Ruksana
Khatun on January 13th of last year.
Although it's been a year, India won't
be declared certified as polio free for about three years due to the
possibility it may be transferred through human waste.
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