Lessons for world from polio campaign

The declaration by the World Health Organisation (WHO) last week that the whole of Africa is free of the wild polio virus is an important landmark in the worldwide battle against this affliction that has been waged for many decades. The world health body has rightly called it “historic” because as late as 2012 the continent had accounted for half of all polio cases worldwide. It is after a long programme of vaccination and surveillance that it has now been declared that polio has been eradicated in all 47 countries in Africa. It is four years since any case was reported from any country. The last case was recorded four years ago in north-east Nigeria. The achievement is all the more remarkable as it comes when the world is in the grip of a virus which is challenging people, governments, health bodies and the medical fraternity.

The campaign against polio may be near its end with the success in Africa. The only two countries where the viral affliction is still present and is a live threat are Pakistan and Afghanistan. There is no cure for polio which causes irreversible paralysis, mostly among children, and tens of thousands of people have suffered from it. The only protection comes from vaccination. The worldwide campaign started in 1988 when the WHO and UNICEF came together to launch a vaccination programme across the world. It is estimated that about $19 billion has been spent on the programme. The challenges were many. Every child in the world had to be reached and vaccinated, and the human effort for that and the logistics required was of an unprecedented scale. There were geographical and climatic challenges and difficulties like how to take the vaccine to nomadic communities. Disinformation and rumours that the vaccine would cause infertility or spread HIV were another problem. This is still a serious problem in Pakistan and Afghanistan. India, which once had the highest case load in the world, was declared polio-free in March 2014.

It is expected that polio will be eradicated even in its last holdouts in the near future. The battle against polio offers some lessons which are relevant now. It took many years to develop a safe and effective vaccine, and even over six decades after vaccinations on a large scale started, a complete victory over the virus has not been achieved. These lessons and those from other health campaigns, like the successful drive against small pox, which was eradicated in 1980, will be useful in the fight against the present pandemic.