Polio eradicted from Western Pacific, WHO says

October 30, 2000
Web posted at: 10:37 AM HKT (0237 GMT)

TOKYO (Reuters) -- The virus that causes polio, once one of the most feared diseases, has been eradicated from the heavily populated Western Pacific region, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Sunday.

After a massive public health campaign to eliminate the debilitating childhood disease, WHO Western Pacific regional director Shigeru Omi said the virus was no longer present in the area that is home to about one-third of the world's population.

At a meeting of public health workers in the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, the WHO and other organisations working to eradicate the disease said that the polio virus had not been found in the Western Pacific for three years.

The region comprises 37 countries that stretch from China to French Polynesia.

The United Nations last month highlighted polio as an ongoing priority as humanitarian agencies and business leaders laid plans and established a countdown for eradicating the virus from earth by 2005.

The WHO said it has raised $550 million of the $1 billion it will take to carry out the final phase of the eradication plan, first unveiled by the World Health Assembly in 1988.

The WHO and UNICEF, the U.N. children's fund, expect the number of countries where the polio virus is transmitted to drop to 20 from 30 by the end of 2000.

Among the remaining countries where transmissions are taking place, 16 are in Africa, many in armed conflict zones, and four are in Asia.

Polio can strike at any age. However, children under the age of three are the majority of its victims. Once contracted, its effects are almost always irreversible.

The virus enters the body through the mouth and slowly destroys the body's nerve cells, causing paralysis and in some cases death by asphyxiation as the muscles controlling the breathing process are cut off from the central nervous system.

A polio vaccine, which required injection, was developed in 1955 by Dr. Jonas Salk. In 1961, Dr. Albert Sabin developed a variation which can be taken orally.

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