India, Once Polio’s Stronghold, Is Certified Free of the Disease

On 27 March 2014, the World Health Organization certified its South-East Asia Region, including India, free of wild poliovirus. The certification followed a three-year period during which no new infections of wild poliomyelitis were recorded across the entire nation, marking a decisive shift for an area that had long experienced a heavy burden of transmission. The final recorded case of wild polio was a young child paralysed in Howrah district, West Bengal, on 13 January 2011, in a country where an estimated 50,000 polio cases a year were occurring when the eradication drive began in 1995.

Systematic vaccination against the disease within India began in 1978 under the Expanded Programme on Immunization, which was renamed the Universal Immunization Programme in 1985 and widened to reach all infants. This framework later integrated into the Child Survival and Safe Motherhood program in 1992 and the Reproductive and Child Health program in 1997. In 1995, in alignment with the 1988 Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the country established the dedicated Pulse Polio immunization program with the objective of achieving complete coverage for every child under five years of age.