India completed three years without polio

India completes three years without reporting any case of polio on 13 January 2014. It is only the second time in the history that a disease is being eliminated in India through immunisation after small pox in May 1980.  Officially the World Health Organisation (WHO) certified India as polio-free on 11 February 2014. The WHO on 24 February 2012 removed India from the list of countries with active endemic wild polio transmission. Once India is declared polio-free, the entire WHO region would also become polio free.

India’s being declared polio-free is particularly important because it was the only country in the South East Asian region with polio cases.The number of polio cases came down from 741 in 2009 to 42 in 2010 and just one in 2011 reported from West Bengal.

India won the war against polio through intense Pulse Polio Immunisation under the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). The Pulse Polio Immunisation programme was launched in 1988 by Rotary International in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO). Under the Polio Immunisation programme, over 17 crore children were vaccinated in each round of vaccination with the help of 24 lakh vaccinators.