On June 21, 2002, the Regional Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication (the Commission) certified that the European Region (EUR) of the World Health Organization (WHO) is free of indigenous wild poliovirus transmission. The last known case in EUR of polio caused by indigenous wild poliovirus transmission occurred in southeast Turkey in November 1998. EUR comprises 51 countries with an estimated population of 873 million and is the third of the six WHO regions to be certified as polio-free, following the Americas Region in 1994 and the Western Pacific Region in 2000. An estimated 3.4 billion persons (55% of the world’s population) live in countries and territories certified free of endemic polio.
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