Progress toward interruption of wild poliovirus transmission–worldwide, January 2005-March 2006

Progress toward global poliomyelitis eradication was made in 2005, despite the diversion of major financial and human resources to control outbreaks resulting from wild poliovirus (WPV) importations primarily from Nigeria. The number of countries with endemic polio has decreased to four, compared with 125 in 1988, when the Polio Eradication Initiative was initiated by the World Health Assembly . In Africa and Asia, only eight of the 22 previously polio-free countries that were reinfected since 2003 reported WPV transmission after July 2005, and transmission was curtailed substantially in all eight of these countries except Somalia. Of the three remaining polio-endemic countries in Asia (Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan), India and Pakistan also moved closer to eradication in 2005, reporting approximately half as many cases in 2005, compared with 2004.