The difficult journey towards eradication

High immunization coverage needs to be ensured for children everywhere in order to achieve eradication, yet this is not always possible in countries at war or which lack health care infrastructures. Weakening polio not only means keeping the wild poliovirus under control, but the vaccine-virus as well. Oral vaccines, mostly used in poor countries because they are cheaper than intramuscular vaccines, have been used to halt the circulation of the wild poliovirus, yet because it is a live virus, it can replicate and circulate within the human body, accumulating mutations that can lead to paralysis. These cases are extremely rare and concentrated in areas with limited healthcare services and where levels of coverage are not guaranteed, but this aspect must not be overlooked if polio eradication is to be obtained in the near future.

Beating poliomyelitis means saving numerous lives. It also means saving 40-50 billion dollars each year. Failure to eradicate polio from these last strongholds, however, could bring about the revival of the disease with 200,000 new cases every year within ten years.  For this reason, the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan have mobilized civil societies, religious leaders, health care workers and families to achieve excellent results in the last few years. The WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recently visited the two countries, reaffirming the global effort towards the 2019 objective: zero polio transmission. 

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