Polio eradication: Fight turns to Pakistan and Afghanistan

LONDON: The global fight to eradicate polio has set its sights on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the WHO said on Tuesday as Africa marked a year without any new cases of the crippling disease for the first time. Nigeria is set to be removed from the list of polio-endemic countries, leaving only Afghanistan and Pakistan, and raising hopes that it will soon become the second human infectious disease after smallpox to be eradicated.  Of the 34 new polio cases reported so far in 2015, 28 of them have been in Pakistan, with the rest in Afghanistan.  “Pakistan and Afghanistan need to finish the job as quickly as possible. They are the source of the fire and you don’t want it spreading again as it has done in the past,” said Oliver Rosenbauer from the WHO.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 12^th, 2015.