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GENEVA (Reuters) - A lack of funds threatens a global campaign to eradicate polio, a crippling disease now found in only seven countries, by the target date of 2005, officials said on Tuesday.

Some $275 million is needed, including $33 million by September, to complete the largest worldwide health campaign ever undertaken, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative said.

Immunisation programmes are being scaled back and will focus on the seven endemic countries (Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia) and six countries at high risk of reinfection (Angola, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nepal and Sudan), a statement said.

The initiative, begun in 1988, is a partnership among the U.N.'s World Health Organisation, U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), Rotary International and U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control.

"We face a very serious threat to the initiative in terms of funding," UNICEF's Carl Tinstman told a news briefing. "It would be catastrophic, not just for polio, but for future public health initiatives if we did not finish this."

The first disease to be eradicated was smallpox in 1979, but measles and guinea worm could be future targets, he added.

Daniel Tarantola, director of WHO's department of vaccines and biologicals, said: "We have no intention of discontinuing polio immunisation until and unless the very last case of polio is proven to be found and transmission eradicated."

"If the resources become available to us, we are confident that we can do it by 2005," he added.

The polio virus, which causes a highly infectious disease that can cause total paralysis in hours, has been wiped out in some 209 countries and territories. But it remains active especially in northern areas of Nigeria and India.

"There is a risk of rebound if we lower our guard in those countries. Therefore we need to hit polio and hit it hard," Tarantola said.

UNICEF's Tinstman said that even after transmission of the deadly virus is halted, the job will not be done for years.

"We have to make certain that once polio is eradicated it remains eradicated and make sure the polio virus does not escape laboratories or vaccine manufacturers' facilities and get back into the environment and cause cases," he said.

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