World Polio Day is observed on 24th October

World Polio Day is observed on 24th October each year with the importance of ending polio. The Memorial Day was established by Rotary International in 1985 to honour the birthday of Dr. Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a polio vaccine. A public health effort to eliminate all cases of poliomyelitis (polio) infection around the world, begun in 1988 and was led by World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the Rotary Foundation. India had an impressive achievement over the deadly polio-viral disease in 2011 with utter commitment, robust oversight, technological innovations, strategies adopted and implemented by Government of India. India embarked on the polio eradication drive almost 19 years ago when around 50,000 children were becoming a victim of this crippling disease every year. The government’s initiative ‘Pulse Polio Immunization Program’ where polio drops were given to every child free of cost has been a great success.On March 2014, World Health Organisation (WHO) South-East Asia Region presented an official certification to India for its ‘Polio Free’ status after three years of no polio casebeing reported from India.
 
Poliomyelitis and various types of vaccines

Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades the nervous system, and can cause total paralysis – atrophy of skeletal muscles. The virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine. Initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and pain in the limbs. One in 200 infections lead to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among those paralysed, 5% to 10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.

There are two types of vaccine that protect against polio:

Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) and Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV). Both orally administered, live attenuated polio vaccines (OPV) and inactivated polio vaccines (IPV) for intramuscular (or subcutaneous) injection are widely used internationally. OPV has been the vaccine of choice for controlling poliomyelitis in many countries, and for the global polio eradication initiative, because of the ease of oral administration, its superiority in conferring intestinal immunity in immunologically naive individuals, and its low cost. IPV is highly effective in preventing paralytic disease caused by all three types of poliovirus. WHO recommends that OPV should remain the vaccine of choice for routine infant immunization but also few doses of IPV administered at infantile stages shall provide better protection.

Eradication of Polio

Eradication of polio has been defined in various ways—as elimination of the occurrence of poliomyelitis even in the absence of human intervention, as extinction of poliovirus, such that the infectious agent no longer exists in nature or in the testing laboratory, as control of an infection to the point at which transmission of the disease ceased within a specified area and as reduction of the worldwide incidence of poliomyelitis to zero as a result of deliberate efforts and requiring no further control measures. The most important step in eradication of polio has been interruption of endemic (the continual, low-level presence of disease in a community) transmission of poliovirus. Stopping polio transmission has been pursued through a combination of routine immunization, supplementary immunization campaigns and surveillance of possible outbreaks. 
  
Doctors in India recommend that though Polio has been eradicated, still there is need of giving importance to the immunization schedule to stop further reoccurrence in any condition, at any level or at any stage. Doctors opine that it'snecessary for every child to take the pulse polio drops even if the baby is vaccinated. When millions of children are being vaccinated together the chances of fighting the virus and getting control over it increases manifolds. While individual vaccination can provide protection, the pulse polio program will help the masses in general.

Therefore, PSM-India urges every parent to vaccinate their children by both routine and pulse polio oral vaccines sponsored by the Government (given on pulse polio immunization day)  to  prevent alleviation of any further infection and disease condition.