Congratulations to India are in order: The country has remained polio-free for an entire year. Thanks to the great efforts of the Polio Eradication Program in India, which aims to immunize every child under the age of five with the oral polio vaccine, there have been no reported cases of polio in the country for the past year. That s a marked difference from just two years ago, when 741 people were diagnosed with the disease. Although it has been eradicated in most of the world, polio, which attacks the nervous system and can lead to irreversible paralysis, still remains a problem in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria.
The latest good news is to the credit of the Indian health infrastructure and the country s vaccination campaign, which has immunized over 170 million children every year.