www.vi-vi.org We are only US$945 million short of successfully eradicating poliomyelitis: here, a case for why polio eradication should be made a priority worldwide is made – a proposal that is both economically viable and important for health care initiatives in the future. With only 128 cases reported in 2012 (by 6 September 2012) compared with 356 in 2011, we have come closer than ever befor...

BACKGROUND India has recently achieved the "Polio free status" by WHO with stringent efforts of the Health Ministry to control its spread. However, we should not forget the lessons learnt from the failure of National malaria eradication Programme and National Tuberculosis control Programme which creates a need to assess the probable barriers for the various National Health Programmes. The prese...

Strengthening routine immunization is one of the four prongs of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Using data collected through 30-cluster sample household surveys of caretakers of children aged 12-23 months, this paper assessed the effectiveness of house-to-house visits on routine oral polio immunization completion, using simple frequency tables, bivariate and multivariate logistic regre...

Australia, along with 36 other countries in the Western Pacific Region, was declared free of poliomyelitis by the World Health Organization in October 2000. Yet, the persistence of wild poliovirus in the 4 remaining polio-endemic countries-Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan-poses a risk for its importation into all countries declared polio free. We describe the public health response and...

A priority of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) 2013-2018 strategic plan is to evaluate the potential impact on polio eradication resulting from expanding one or more Supplementary Immunization Activities (SIAs) to children beyond age five-years in polio endemic countries. It has been hypothesized that such expanded age group (EAG) campaigns could accelerate polio eradication by el...

Objective: The objective of this study was to analyze the current strategies used for eradicating wild polio viruses (WPV) and to propose some innovative strategies that may help to accelerate the progress towards polio eradication. Methods: We assessed the current strategies proposed by the World Health Organization, and the effectiveness of the current trivalent oral polio vaccine types 1, 2 ...

IN JUNE 2009, THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) declared the 2009 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic and in October 2009, President Obama declared it a national emergency. The influenza A(H1N1) virus is being monitored around the world for changes in virulence or epidemiology. There has been a push to have vaccines ready, yet vaccine supply may be insufficient in some areas. The public wants to be as...