Immunisation push propels India towards victory in war against polio

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/02/india-winning-war-against-polio


A health worker gives polio drops to a child in a village near Patna, India. In one five-day spell last year, more than two million workers visited 68 million homes to inoculate 172 million children aged under 5. Photograph: Altaf Qadri/AP

Moradabad is a nondescript and scruffy city, 110 miles north of the Indian capital Delhi. Few have heard of it, despite its population of nearly five million. But it is about to become the site of an astonishing victory against a terrible disease.

Moradabad has long been the centre of one of the most stubborn concentrations of polio in India.

The disease is passed on by person-to-person contact and, with Moradabad's poor inhabitants frequently travelling far across the country in search of work, outbreaks elsewhere have often been traced back to the city.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) stipulates that three years must pass without any cases of polio occurring before a region can be declared polio-free.