A three-decade-long worldwide campaign to stamp out poliovirus has come tantalisingly close to ending a disease which caused 350,000 cases per year in the late 1980s.
Yet despite the recent victory in Africa, cases are again rising in its last two haunts – Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan saw 12 cases in 2018, and 145 last year. Moreover there have been other outbreaks linked to mutated strains from vaccine.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan swathes of are beyond the reach of polio teams because of Taliban edicts banning door-to-door visits.
The monitoring board said the vision of a polio-free world currently seemed “a distant pinpoint of light”. The polio programme is in “dire straits,” the board’s five members warned.
Too many people had believed that the job was almost done last year, leading to complacency amid a “jaw-dropping” slump in performance.
“The phrase now being used to encourage everyone is: ‘The last mile is always the most difficult’. The polio programme is too forgiving of itself,” the board said.
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