Independent Monitoring Board - Global Polio Eradication Initiative

AT A GLANCECASESIn the first four months of 2012 there have been fewer cases of polio, in fewerdistricts, of fewer countries than at any time in history. Transmission is always lowerat this time of year, but the Programme’s current position is substantially strongerthan it was in the same low-transmission period last year (figure 1).So far this year, poliotransmission is better confinedthan ever beforeAnalyzing this by country reveals a mixed picture across the Programme (figure 2).There has been some very strong performance indeed, but areas of deep concernpersist.The very best news comes from India. For years, many believed that the challengeof stopping polio transmission in India would be the downfall of the Programme;that, quite simply, it could not be done. They have been proven wrong. In January2012, India achieved the major milestone of a year passing without a single caseof polio. The country is no longer polio-endemic. What many thought unachievablehas been achieved. Confidence in the Programme should receive a major boost as aresult of this.India’s impressive successshows the way forwardDevelopments elsewhere offer some promising news. Angola and DR Congo,two countries with re-established polio transmission, have not reported a case ofpolio yet this year. The last case reported in Angola was in July 2011; in DR Congo,December 2011. In the first four months of 2012, Chad, the third country withre-established transmission, has seen 88% fewer cases than during the sameperiod last year. Pakistan has had less than half as many cases as in the sameperiod last year. There have been no outbreaks of polio outside of the endemic andre-established transmission countries.Some countries have achievedreductions in case numbers inrecent monthsBut there is also some very concerning news. Both Nigeria and Afghanistan havehad many more cases so far this year than they had at the same time last year.Case numbers are only one measure of progress, but they matter. They correlatewell with the other measures by which we assess programme performance, bothquantitative and qualitative.Nigeria and Afghanistan arethe exceptions – their casenumbers continue to climb;they are outliers in a growingsuccess story11Independent Monitoring Board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative Every Missed Child