GENEVA/INDIA -- Taking part in the massive public health initiative to eradicate polio, President Clinton gave polio vaccine to an eight-month-old girl at a hospital in Hyderabad, India (24 March), demonstrating his support for the global campaign to eradicate the disease, billed 'Every Child Counts'.

Just days before a National Immunization Day was launched (26 March) as part of an intensified phase of the campaign in India, Clinton congratulated India on its enormous success to date. This year India doubled the number of monthly National Immunization Day rounds from two to four throughout the country and added in two more rounds in eight high-risk states. As a result, one billion doses of polio vaccine have been delivered to the nation's children in the last year. Historically India has accounted for more than half of the world's polio.

Clinton paid tribute to the organizations spearheading the campaign: the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), as well as the U.S Agency for International Development. In addition he singled out the contribution made by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the efforts of its Co-Chair and President Patty Stonesifer.

Now concentrated in parts of Africa and the Indian sub-continent, polio will be the second disease ever to be eradicated after smallpox. The challenge now in India is in eight densely populated states, in particular Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and the city of Delhi.

There is currently a shortfall of US $300 million out of a total of US $1 billion needed to complete the task through certification of eradication in 2005. With the eradication of polio and the eventual cessation of polio immunization, the world will save US $1.5 billion per year.

Significant achievements have been made since the launch of the polio eradication initiative in 1988:

• The number of polio cases has fallen from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to some 6,700 reported cases in 1999;
• The number of polio-endemic countries has fallen from 125 to 30;
• Polio has been eradicated from the Americas, Europe, the countries of the Western Pacific, and much of the Middle East and disappeared from most of northern and southern Africa.