Polio: The Beginning of the End
Statement by Dr. David Brandling-Bennett, Deputy Director, Pan American Health Organization, at Polio Eradication: The Opportunity of a Lifetime event
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FDR Memorial, Washington, DC, April 12, 2000—Good morning. It is an honor to be here among such distinguished company, in such an appropriate place, to talk with you about the opportunity of a lifetime. I'd like to acknowledge our colleagues and partners from USAID, the CDC, Rotary International, the Global Health Council, the UN Foundation, Senator Leahy, the Roosevelt family, and others with us here today.
For many of us, this is really the second opportunity in a lifetime to eradicate a disease. Most of you know we made smallpox history through a worldwide effort in 1977, marking a great public health victory and paving the way for the polio eradication campaign.
In the early 1950s, poliomyelitis killed thousands of children and crippled many thousands more worldwide. The introduction of vaccines developed by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin reduced this threat and made the idea of eradication possible.
The beginning of the end of polio came on May 14, 1985 when the Pan American Health Organization's Director, Dr. Carlyle Guerra de Macedo, declared:
"The time has come for us to say that it is unacceptable for any child in the Americas to suffer from polio."
With that affirmation, PAHO began a campaign to eradicate transmission of wild-type poliovirus in the Region of the Americas by the end of 1990, despite formidable technical, logistical, managerial, and financial obstacles. Joining us at the start of this effort were UNICEF, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Canadian Public Health Association, and Rotary International.
Polio eradication in the Americas succeeded through intensified immunization activities, in the form of national immunization days and house-to-house "mop-up" campaigns in high-risk areas, enhanced surveillance of acute flaccid paralysis, close monitoring of vaccination coverage, rapid investigation of suspected cases, aggressive outbreak control whenever necessary to interrupt transmission, and community monitoring to ensure absence of the virus in both human and the environment. Not even civil strife in Central America and Peru stopped the campaigns, as opposing factions laid down arms and took up vaccines.
By 1991, polio cases were confirmed to eight cases in coastal Colombia and one case in central Peru, and mop-up operations swung into high gear, with health workers and volunteers visiting over a million households in Colombia and two million in Peru, vaccinating 80% of children under five years old.
The last case of polio was detected in the Americas in August, 1991 in Junín, in a little boy named Luis Fermín Tenorio Cortez. You'll be happy to know that he is now in school in Lima, walks and plays soccer with a brace on his leg, and has acquired a position of leadership among his classmates.
The threat of polio has vanished for the vast majority of the Regions children. The strengthened surveillance and laboratory systems are a legacy we are now using in our next effort--that of eliminating measles. But we cannot rest until global eradication and I can tell you that worldwide, the polio eradication plan is in place and on track. Ten countries, five where there is conflict and five where the polio virus is strong, are the targets.
Working together, we have achieved a great deal. What better legacy can we leave future generations than erasing the threat of death and disease from polio? Eradicating this crippling disease will make polio history, and the laboratory networks and health infrastructure the eradication campaign helped establish are already proving useful as we work to make measles history.
As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today." Let us have no doubts that we will succeed. Thank you.
