NEW DELHI: With 215 polio cases recorded worldwide, the deadline to eradicate polio by the end of 2012 has again been missed. Back in 1988, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had set the year 2000 as a global deadline for ending wild poliovirus transmission. The deadline was extended several times since 2000.
In 2011, 650 cases were reported worldwide. So there was an encouraging decline in 2012. But, as the Lancet has editorially commented in a forthcoming issue, "global effort to eradicate polio has suffered devastating setbacks", raising doubts about whether polio eradication will continue in this new year or slide into deadly resurgence.
The main reason for this pessimism is the condition prevailing in Pakistan, one of the only three countries in the world where polio virus survived in 2012. The killing of nine health workers who were giving polio drops in Karachi in December last, and the shooting of six aid workers and one doctor in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which according to The Lancet accounted for more than 40% of all Pakistan's polio cases and 46% of Pakistan's infected towns and districts in 2012 has disrupted the war against polio in Pakistan.
And the poliovirus may spread from Pakistan into neighboring countries, including India, where no polio case was reported last year. In recent years Afghanistan and China have reported cases of polio originating in Pakistan.
"Genetic analysis shows that two of the three chains of polio transmission in Afghanistan are from Pakistan", the Lancet wrote.
The polio outbreak in China in 2011 - the first since 1999 - was reportedly imported from Pakistan. It led to 18 people getting paralysed and one death.
More than 3·5 million Pakistani children have missed polio vaccinations after WHO and UNICEF suspended their anti-polio campaign following repeated attacks by Taliban and other fundamentalist forces, Lancet has reported. "Such attacks deprive Pakistan's most vulnerable populations-especially children-of basic life-saving health interventions", WHO and UNICEF said in a joint statement.
The other countries where polio has survived are Afghanistan and Nigeria. In 2003-04 religious leaders had ensured a boycott of polio vaccine in northern Nigeria. This led to the deadly disease not only rebounding in Nigeria, but also spreading to 15 African countries and to Indonesia, the Lancet said.
Meanwhile global availability of funds for polio is also reportedly dipping as donors are getting 'fatigued' of the long drawn war. This could also spell trouble for the polio vaccination program.
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