WHO targets 175 million children in boosted polio eradication drive

GENEVA, July 29 (AFP) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday stepped up the drive to wipe out polio by announcing mass immunisation for 175 million children in India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Egypt by the end of the year.

The four countries account for 99 percent of new cases of the crippling and potentially deadly disease, WHO said in a statement.

Director-general Jong Wook Lee said he wanted every child in those countries to be vaccinated against polio, but he warned that WHO was short of funding to sustain the effort.

"I want to see this disease gone once and for all. We have eliminated it from almost every country in the world. Now is the time to boost our action and resolve, and wipe it out everywhere," said Lee, who took office last week.

"I am immediately upgrading WHO's capacity to support India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Egypt in their efforts to immunise every child against polio."

The WHO had been aiming to eradicate polio worldwide by 2000, but its campaign was thwarted because the virus is still circulating in seven countries, down from 125 when the eradication drive started in 1988.

They include Afghanistan, Niger and Somalia, as well as the four countries targeted in the immunisation campaign starting in August.

Poliomyelitis, to give it its full name, is an acute viral infection which mainly affects children and can be spread by simple physical concact.

It causes permanent paralysis and other forms of physical disability in many of its victims.

WHO recorded 1,919 cases of polio last year, marking a sharp increase over the 483 cases worldwide the year before.

The increase was attributed to an epidemic in India, and a growth in the number of cases in Nigeria.

Lee said the anti-polio campaign will be spearheaded by David Heymann, the former WHO director of communicable diseases who led the successful effort to control the SARS outbreak earlier this year.

"Just as with SARS, polio knows no boundaries," Heymann said.

"In January, a child was paralysed by polio in Lebanon for the first time in 10 years. That virus travelled from India."

"Unless we stop transmission in the remaining polio-endemic countries, polio will spread to other countries and paralyse children, potentially reversing the gains already made," he added.

Polio has also spread from Nigeria in the past year to neighbouring countries which had been polio-free, according to the WHO.

However, the WHO warned that it lacked 210 million dollars in funding to sustain the anti-polio drive through to 2005.

Lee highlighted a polio immunisation campaign in Angola this year which covered five million children in three days.

The country last reported a polio case two years ago, and the drive against the disease has been partly helped by the end of the civil war there.

"Four years ago, 1000 children were paralysed in Angola by polio, and outbreaks in other parts of Africa were traced back to that country," Lee said.

Eradication can only be declared successful once an area has been free of polio cases for three years.

Polio vaccinations campaigns are underway in several other countries, organised by governments and other aid agencies.

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