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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/21/international/21CND-POLI.html

Health Organization Declares Europe Free of Polio

By ELIZABETH OLSON

ENEVA, June 21 — The World Health Organization declared today that Europe is free of polio, which once claimed hundreds of thousands of children yearly as victims.

This is the third region worldwide that has been officially certified as polio-free, as the health organization, a United Nations agency, continues a drive to eradicate the disease globally by 2005. The Americas were certified free of the disease in 1994, and the Western Pacific region six years later. Experts hope to add some Central Asian countries soon, at which point they say that more than half the world's countries would be free of the disease.

Poliomyelitis, a viral inflammation of the spinal cord often accompanied by muscle paralysis, infected as many as 500,000 children each year as recently as 1980.

Widespread national immunization campaigns have cut the incidence of the disease. To gain the certification, a region must show that there has been no polio virus that could not be traced to another country for the required minimum of three years, the W.H.O. said.

Bruce Aylward, who directs the agency's polio eradication program, said an independent group of experts had made the certification.

"The only risk that remains," he said, "is the accidental release of polio from a laboratory," where a stock of the virus might be stored for research purposes.

The last case reported in Europe that appeared to have originated locally was in Nov. 1998 in southeastern Turkey near the Iranian border, W.H.O. said. Health experts said that outbreaks last year in Bulgaria and Georgia, had resulted from visitors bringing the virus from India. However, those countries have met the W.H.O. requirements for an effective plan to deal with such imported cases and have comprehensive immunization campaigns.

Despite the declaration on Europe, reaching the goal of stamping out polio worldwide within three years is in doubt, W.H.O. has said, because of a shortage of funds for the $1 billion eradication campaign. Officials said $275 million is needed for vaccination campaigns, particularly in countries where health services have broken down because of conflict.

Vaccination campaigns have been disrupted because of conflict in Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia and Sudan, health experts said. Other countries where the disease is still endemic include Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Niger and Pakistan.

Experts said $60 million was needed this year to insure that the necessary immunization campaigns get under way. One of those began toay, in Angola, where W.H.O. and Unicef began a three-day immunization drive designed to reach three million children.

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