Vaccine donation a shot in the arm for WHO polio campaign

The UN Children's Fund UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) are claiming a big boost to the global campaign for a polio-free world by 2005, with a vaccine maker's gift of 30 million doses of oral vaccine.

WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland says the donation comes from Aventis Pasteur, a pharmaceutical firm in Strasbourg, France.

"This marks another milestone in the global effort to eradicate polio," he said.

UNICEF officials say the vaccine will be distributed primarily in Africa, with some 3 million doses were already en route to Liberia.

Mr Brundtland says as a result of the WHO campaign, launched in 1988 by 166 countries, the world is now "on the cusp" of eliminating polio.

According to WHO statistics, the number of polio cases has fallen from 350,000 a year in 1988 to 480 last year.

During the same period, the number of countries in which the disease is widespread has declined to just 10 from 125 in 1988.

The disease remains endemic in Afghanistan, Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan.

Polio, which mainly affects children under five, is caused by a virus that invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis or even death.

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