The recent news of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) in Malawi imported from Pakistan and of polio outbreak in Israel caused by ‘circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 3’ (cVDPV3) are visible signs of floundering polio eradication. When a virus in oral polio vaccine (OPV) de-attenuates by mutations, acquiring transmission efficiency and neuro-virulence, it is called cVDPV.
The eradication target, when launched in 1988, was 2000, as “a gift of the twentieth century to the twenty-first”. The World Health Organization assumed the task, assigned by unanimous resolution in the World Health Assembly (WHA), the forum of Ministers of Health of all nations.
The resolution was perfectly timed: Rotary International launched its ‘PolioPlus’ project in 1985, to provide polio vaccines to under-five children of all developing countries before 2005. Of the six WHO regions, three — Americas, Europe and Western Pacific — had already independently resolved to eradicate polio in their territories by or before 2000. Incidentally, they achieved the goal more or less on time. WHO’s task was essentially confined to the “Southern Arc” of the remaining regions — Africa, Eastern Mediterranean and South East Asia. Having failed the target of 2000, WHO revised it every 4-5 years; now it is 2026, as in the strategy document.
