Source: The New York Times
For the first time, India has gone a full year without a new polio case, the World Health Organization announced last week.
The last case, the only one in 2011, was of an 18-month-old girl in West Bengal State whose sudden paralysis was confirmed as polio on Jan. 13. There were 42 known cases in 2010.
Polio eradication officials described a year without new cases as a “game-changer” and a “milestone” because India was for decades one of the biggest centers of the disease.
But the country won’t be certified as polio-free until it has gone three years without a new case, and there have been new cases recently in three nearby countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. For every case of paralysis, there are an estimated 200 asymptomatic carriers, any of whom can spread the disease.