The jab jigsaw

Has India been short-sighted in its approach towards stamping out polio? Is the World Health Organization (who) foisting a discriminatory polio eradication agenda on developing countries like India? Or is the pharmaceutical industry eyeing gains by pushing an alternative means to stave off the threat of the disease?

Stepping up preventive efforts

Every new case of polio in the country should henceforth be treated as a "public health emergency". This suggestion was made by the India expert advisory group on polio, with a view to eradicating polio by the end of 2005. The decision was taking at the 10th meeting of the expert body, held in Delhi.

Ominous sign

africa's Ivory Coast might become the eighth polio-free country to be re-infected with the virus, warned the World Health Organization (who). The fresh case of paralytic poliomyelitis reported here is suspected to be linked to the same virus that spread to seven polio-free countries from northern Nigeria.

Reach the last person

WILL that crippling scourge called polio be wiped out from the face of the earth by the end of this year? The World Health Organization (WHO) hopes so. But all its ambitions -- and that of the six governments it is working in tandem with -- will go to nought if the last person the disease could afflict isn't immunised. Reach the last person, Mahatma Gandhi used to say. How apt this pithy lesson on governance is in this effort to eradicate a disease that, otherwise, can only bounce back.

How effective is the global polio eradication drive?

an optimistic note, about wiping out polio from the six afflicted countries, was to be sounded at a conference organised by the World Health Organisation (who) in Geneva on January 15. Instead, the sudden re-emergence of the disease in two African nations -- Benin and Cameroon -- set the alarm bells ringing and turned it into an emergency meeting.

Cripple effect

West Africa is hell-bent on eradicating polio. In a remarkable effort, via "synchronized" national immunization day (nid) programmes from October 19 to 26, thousands of volunteers and health workers fanned out to administer the oral polio vaccine to 15 million children in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo, and previously unreachable areas in currently stable Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea (Conakry).

Did the polio vaccine start AIDS?

The origin of human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) has generated considerable interest and controversy amongst scientists the world over.

'UP is core area'

The upsurge in the incidence of polio in Uttar Pradesh (up) is threatening to derail the World Health Organisation's (who) goal of eradicating the disease from the planet by 2005, asserts who Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland.

A tale of two diseases

India is the shining star in the global battle to eradicate smallpox. It is also a branded villain as far as polio is concerned. How is it that we managed so well against a disease more virulent than polio? Why does Uttar Pradesh today contribute to about 88 per cent of all polio cases worldwide?

Polio - alive and kicking

The polio virus (pv) is possibly the most innocuous virus that affects humans. The improvement of sanitation standards across the world has meant fewer people are afflicted by polio as infants, upsetting the historical balance between virus and host. But, since poorer sections still live in squalor and consume water and food contaminated by faeces, the virus remains a threat to the global community.