BBC News Online: Health

Polio eradication draws closer

Last year there were 3,500 reported polio cases, compared to 350,000 cases in the year the initiative started.

Even in the past year the number of cases has been halved from more than 7,000.

However, experts are warning that dealing with the final 1% could prove the toughest hurdle yet, as the campaign struggles to make an impact in countries hit by war and poor health facilities, such as DR Congo and Angola.

Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general of the World Health Organisation, said: "Victory over the poliovirus is within sight."

"We must now close in on the remaining strongholds of the disease and use all possible resources to extinguish polio.

"We ask that everyone involved maintain the focus on achieving this historical milestone in international public health."

Last year, 550m children under five-years-old were immunised during "national immunisation days" in 82 countries.

The organisations behind the campaign, which, alongside the WHO, include Rotary International, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), say that they are still on course for a world free of polio by 2005.

War and polio

Carol Bellamy, executive director of Unicef, said that the initiative now needs to reach children in even the most remote places on Earth.

More money is also needed - an estimated £285m to provide an estimated 6bn doses of vaccine to 600m children by 2005.

Polio is a highly infectious disease - the virus that causes it invades the nervous system and can cause paralysis.

One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis and between 5% and 10% of those infected die.

Until worldwide coverage with vaccination can be achieved, whole communities are at risk from outbreaks.

An outbreak in August last year on the west African island of Cape Verde killed 17 and paralysed 44.

All pictures courtesy of Marcel Crozet/WHO.