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DATA BRIEFS:  Progress and Disparity

Polio eradication in sight

If current progress continues and efforts are accelerated, early in the new millennium the world will be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief. The net is closing in on polio, case by case and country by country, and full eradication of this disabling disease is now in sight.

In both 1997 and 1998, 450 million children were immunized against polio each year, as part of the enormous effort under way in virtually every country of the world to eradicate the disease by 2000. Since 1988, the number of cases globally has fallen by 86%, a testament to immunization programmes and surveillance efforts, led by WHO, UNICEF, Rotary International, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and countless groups and individuals around the world.

Village women welcome a vaccination team during southern Sudan's 1999 National Immunization Day

As a result, in 1998, 5,108 cases of polio were reported; 1,564 were caused by the wild virus, which is responsible for all transmission of the disease. Only 33 countries reported polio at the end of 1998, 14 fewer than in 1997.

In countries with inadequate polio surveillance, the number of reported cases can only be an estimate — the actual number of cases may be higher. In other countries (such as Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand), where surveillance is good and the number of wild cases is low to none, cases of paralysis that physicians suspect might be polio are registered as such unless actually disproved by a lab test. This ensures that polio cases are not under-reported and that the public health system remains aware that the wild polio virus might still exist.

* The number listed in parentheses are paralytic cases of polio caused by wild polio virus, which is responsible for all transmission of the disease. A country with a good polio surveillance system that records no polio cases caused by the wild virus is deemed to be close to to eliminating the disease. When a country has had no cases of polio caused by the wild virus for three consecutive years, it is considered polio-free.