NEW DELHI, India · Polio cases in India have almost tripled in the first half of this year compared with the same period a year ago, a jump that could set back the world's drive to wipe out the crippling virus by 2005.

The new figures were dismaying for India, which only two decades ago saw tens of thousands afflicted with polio every year but was now thought to be on the last lap in the race to wipe out the disease after an ambitious immunization campaign.

 

According to the National Polio Surveillance Project, run by the federal government and the World Health Organization, 86 new cases were reported from January through June this year -- compared with 31 cases over the same period last year.

The total number of new cases for 2002 could end up being triple the 268 reported last year, said Dr. Anubha Ghose, India's director for health at the international humanitarian organization CARE. New polio cases increase in the second half of the year, during India's rainy season.

"India has been caught napping," Ghose said Monday. "At this rate, we will surely miss the 2005 deadline."

A total 480 new polio cases were reported worldwide last year -- more than half in India and the rest in nine other nations. The United States, the Americas, Europe and the western Pacific region are polio-free.

In 1988, when the world launched a drive to eradicate the disease, there were 350,000 new cases in 125 countries. WHO and other international organizations have led the drive to eliminate the disease by 2005.

Besides India, new cases have been found this year in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Niger, Nigeria and Somalia, according to WHO.

To be declared polio-free, a country must have no new cases for three years. So India and the others must show no new cases after Dec. 31, 2002, to reach the 2005 goal.

A WHO spokeswoman said that was still possible.

"If … the immunizations that we've got planned for after the high-transmission season go well, there is always this possibility," Christine McNab said from WHO headquarters in Geneva.

However, Bob Keegan of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the spike this year in India is likely to delay the 2005 goal by up to a year.

"We certainly were hoping to eradicate polio from India this year, and there's a great disappointment that we're not going to be able to do that," said Keegan, deputy director of the CDC's global immunization division. "This is a setback in India, and it means that we're going to see cases in India for another 12 to 18 months."

Still, McNab said India should be "extremely proud of its efforts." She pointed to the "remarkable decline" from the 1980s, when India had as many as 200,000 new cases a year, to 2001's 268 cases. India set a world record when, on a single day in January 1996, 93 million children were immunized.

Polio usually strikes children under age 5. It can cripple the spinal cord and brain, causing paralysis and in some cases, death. It is transmitted through food or water contaminated by the fecal matter of an infected person.