India, many said, would be the last country to be polio-free. The odds were too great - to identify and immunize more than 170 million children behind every door of every dwelling.
India proved them wrong. The last case of polio in India was on 13 January 2011 in Howrah, West Bengal and the country was officially certified polio-free by the World Health Organization on 27 March 2014 three years after its last polio case.
13 January 2016, marks 5 years of a polio-free India. As part of the polio endgame strategy India introduced the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) in November 2015 and is gearing up for the global synchronized switch from trivalent oral polio vaccine to the bivalent oral polio vaccine in April 2016.
India has demonstrated to the world that it could stop polio. Now it is using the polio strategies to make sure that all its children are fully immunized and have the healthy beginning that they are entitled to.
Watch this film to see how UNICEF has been a proud partner in India’s fight against Polio and how the polio strategies and legacy are being used for routine immunization and beyond.
