India now polio free says WHO report

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said WHO removed India from the list after the country passed one year without registering any new cases.

The milestone is a major victory in the global effort to eradicate polio and leaves only three countries with endemic polio - Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan.

India must pass another two years without new cases to be declared entirely polio-free.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh praised some 230,000 volunteers who travelled across India to vaccinate young children against the disease and said that India’s success against polio “shows that teamwork pays”.

“This gives us hope that we can finally eradicate polio not only from India but from the face of the entire mother Earth,” he said at a New Delhi conference on polio yesterday, just after the announcement was made.

He said more work was needed to ensure every Indian child “has equal access to the best immunisation” as well as to other factors for warding off disease including better sanitation, education, safe drinking water and nutritious food.

Although conditions are improving in the country, many millions of Indian children still live in poverty-stricken shanty towns and rural areas where there is little access to clean water and proper sanitation, and diets remain poor with very little choice, giving rise to more disease and illness amongst the country’s young people.

“We need to educate our children and our mothers on the importance of hygiene and nutrition to overall good health and longevity,” Singh said.

India’s success in fighting polio has been credited to a partnership between the Indian government, the WHO, Unicef and Rotary International.

Between them the organisations have contributed more than $1 billion to the global eradication effort of the disease, which was once the scourge of the western world.