<h5>What is polio and how does it spread?</h5>  <p>Polio is an infectious disease that’s caused by a virus (sounds familiar, eh?). It has been around in the world for thousands of years. In ancient Egyptian paintings, we can spot a person or two suffering from polio.
Polio mostly affects children under 5 years old. It causes paralysis and spreads from person to person by sneezing, coughing, and coming in contact with the poop of an infected person.
While most people who get polio don’t get sick, some experience fever, cough, and cold, but they become well after a week or two. Few get the worst deal - they develop paralysis in their arms or legs or both for the rest of their lives. Out of these people, some even die.</p> <h5>How bad was the polio issue in India?</h5>  <p>Scientists have seen that polio spreads very fast in areas where there is extreme poverty and poor sanitation. Unfortunately in India, there are many places like that. About 30 years ago, polio was so bad in India that 500 to 1000 children were getting paralysed daily (can you imagine!). This was mainly because of low vaccination rates.</p> <h5>Why were polio vaccination rates so low in India?</h5>  <p>Since the population of India is so huge and so many people live in remote areas, the vaccine could not be delivered to the children who needed it the most. In many cases, the parents did not know the importance of the polio vaccine and were suspicious of the health workers trying to vaccinate their children.
The absolute worst year of polio in India was 1992. After that, cases began declining but many children were still falling sick with the virus each day. In 1995, India got super-serious about putting an end to the virus once and for all.</p> <h5>How did India put an end to polio?</h5>  <p>In 2009, India accounted for 60 per cent of all the polio cases in the world. In 2011, India reported its very last polio case, after which there hasn’t been another one ever. Here are a few things the Indian government did between 1995 and 2011, to achieve this huge task:</p>
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1. Health workers began working with local religious leaders to convince the parents about the importance of the vaccine.</p>
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2. A new kind of polio vaccine was invented in 2009, that was far more powerful than the older polio vaccine that was being given to children earlier. From 2010 onwards, India began giving the new vaccine that prevented polio from spreading.</p>
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3. Finally, the best and biggest way polio was defeated once and for all was the Government’s introduction of National Immunisation Days (NIDs). The Government organised NIDs twice a year during which 172 million children were vaccinated (that’s more than the population of many countries on Earth!)</p>
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Thanks to thousands of people working together round the clock in India and India receiving the help of many international organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef, Rotary, etc., we were finally able to reach every child in the remotest corners of the country and vaccinate them against this evil disease.
In 2014, 3 years after its last reported case of polio, India was declared polio-free by the WHO. Isn’t that a fantastic feat by our gigantic and diverse country?</p>
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Polio is a horrible disease that mostly affects children under 5 years old, causing paralysis, and in some cases death. Let’s find out how India defeated this evil disease forever.

How India Put An End To Polio

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