India to wipe out polio in three years

India expects to be free from polio in the next three years, according to our Health Minister. In one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus in recent years, India has reported 583 polio cases in 2006 - 481 of them in the poor, populous state of Uttar Pradesh - fuelling fears it could undermine global efforts to eradicate the disease. At least two dozen children died in the outbreak. India reported just 66 cases last year. However, Health Minister Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss is confident that the battle will be won with the help of a stepped up immunisation drive and India will be able to eradicate polio in three years. "We are at the end of the problem and will hit the final nail in the coffin," Ramadoss said. The Uttar Pradesh polio strain has spread to neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh as well as faraway Angola and Namibia. All four countries were polio-free before the recent reports. Health authorities suspect that a traveller carried the virus in his intestines, where it can linger for up to six weeks. International experts said India was in the final stages of eradicating polio after bringing numbers down from the thousands in the 1980s, but this could be the toughest part. Researchers from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that the last few cases are the most difficult to eliminate. The CDC is helping New Delhi fight polio and provided $13.5 million in funding this year. They also complimented India's efforts in bringing down the number of annual cases sharply - from thousands per year in the 1980s - but said the 2006 outbreak should make officials sit up. The researchers said that it is a warning that we can't be complacent. Federal authorities said national immunisation efforts planned for January and February would target worst-hit regions, particularly parts of Uttar Pradesh, where poor sanitation and healthcare services in crowded towns fuelled the outbreak. Islamic clerics have offered to join vaccination teams in Muslim-dominated parts of the state where many parents are unwilling to let children be given the drugs due to rumours they were part of a Western conspiracy to make them sterile. Greater use would be made of the monovalent vaccine that targets the dominant strain rather than the polyvalent vaccine that works against all three types of the virus.