End Polio Now Update as of Aug 28, 2015

 

What is that Polio Picture?  It's a picture of the Honorable Minister of State Mrs. Saira Afzal Taror at the national launch of IPV into the routine immunization schedule in Islamabad. 

Pakistan has become the second polio-endemic country to introduce the inactivated polio vaccine into the country’s routine immunization schedule, a move which will benefit more than four million children per year across the country. 

Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world where polio remains endemic. Nigeria, which recently marked one year without a case of wild polio, introduced the vaccine in February of this year, and Afghanistan is due to begin using IPV in the coming weeks. While every country in the world is set to introduce IPV, endemic countries will greatly benefit from the boost in immunity that new evidence has clearly demonstrated that adding one dose of IPV to OPV offers to children as they fight to end transmission of the virus. Aziz Memon from Rotary International emphasized that “… adding at least one dose of IPV to the routine immunization schedule is the best possible way to protect your children from life-long polio paralysis, while the disease is being eradicated from the remaining endemic hotspots.”     Could 2015-16 be the year of the final Polio case?