Promising report on polio

Tommy Thompson, the US health secretary, said perhaps just 1,000 cases of the disease persisted in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria and Niger.

"We’re on the precipice of accomplishing it," said Mr Thompson, speaking of the battle to eliminate the disease. He had spent an encouraging day hearing plans by Indian officials and volunteers to go door-to-door across the country making sure all children under five are immunised.

"We’re probably down to the last 1,000 cases, probably the most difficult to eradicate," he added.

When a worldwide effort began in 1988 to wipe out polio by 2005, 350,000 new polio cases were reported in 125 countries. The singer Neil Young, the writer Arthur C Clarke and the US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt all suffered from the crippling disease.

Mr Thompson said the final group of cases would prove hardest to tackle because poverty and lack of education prevented people from understanding the need for vaccination. But India has reported only eight new cases this year, after 260 last year and more than 1,000 in 2002, he added.

The world must be free of polio for three consecutive years before the disease is officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organisation.

Mr Thompson said it would be a medical milestone to reach the first polio-free year. "We have a great opportunity to eradicate polio, only the second disease mankind has been able to eradicate," he said, adding that polio would be wiped out "by the end of this year".

A spokesman for the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health said: "We share Mr Thompson’s hopes of eradicating polio by the end of the year and are monitoring the situation closely with the World Health Organisation.

"It would be a very great feat indeed when we consider the number of cases that have existed globally. Eradication would, however, only be definitive after a few years, so the World Health Organisation would need to continue to monitor the situation closely."

It was feared that a six-month polio vaccine boycott in Nigeria’s predominantly Islamic northern state of Kano could put the immunisation programme back.

Kano authorities insisted tests conducted by the state’s scientists last year showed the vaccines were contaminated with a variant of the hormone oestrogen, which they said would cause infertility in girls.

Some Nigerian Islamic clerics also argued the vaccines also spread AIDS, claiming that their evidence originated on the internet.

The dispute appears now to have been resolved.

Last month, the United Nations was able to remove Somalia from the list of polio-endemic countries after no new cases of the disease had been reported in the Horn of Africa nation for two years.

Carol Bellamy, the executive director of UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, said then: "If polio can be stopped in Somalia, it can be stopped anywhere. This success is a testament to the will of the Somali people."

Rotary clubs around the world have played a crucial role in the fight against the disease, raising more than 130 million for vaccination campaigns.

After hearing the disease could be eradicated by the end of the year, Dr Arthur Thompson, the Rotary Club administrator in London, said: "It’s a very dramatic thing. The news that the world is to be polio-free next year is just amazing.

"We should all applaud the outstanding work they have done."

But Vicki McKenna, who contracted polio at the age of nine months, when living in Pakistan, and wrote a book on her experiences, urged caution.

Mrs McKenna, an acupuncturist who lives in Glasgow, helped set up the Scottish Post-Polio Network to help polio survivors deal with the consequences of the disease. She said: "There are many varieties of enteroviruses which are very similar to polio and there is no sign of them being eradicated.

"While enteroviruses don’t leave the individual paralysed like polio does, some variants have symptoms that are extremely similar.

"‘Polio’ is just a label, and to say that it will be completely eradicated is not strictly true."