India out of WHOs polio endemic list

India is finally off World Health Organizations list of polio endemic countries.

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India is finally off World Health Organizations list of polio endemic countries. This means that no new polio case has come up in the country in the last one year and also all laboratory samples collected during this period have tested negative for the virus.

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad announced this during the inaugural session of the two-day Polio Summit on Saturday. I received the letter from WHO director general Margaret Chan just a while back, he said. The other countries on the endemic list are Nigeria,Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Azad said that as per the Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan put in place for polio,any new case will now be declared as a public health emergency. The period for mop up operations in the wake of a new case is already down to one week. If India remains free of any new polio cases over the next two years,it would finally be declared polio free in 2014.

The summit was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Commending the efforts of the volunteers and organisations like WHO,UNICEF and Rotary International for their partnership in the fight against polio,he said malnutrition and lack of education were some of the other challenges facing the country.

We are moving towards creation of public health cadres to work for prevention of disease. It will be out effort to ensure that every village has access to safe drinking water8230;. We need to accelerate our efforts to achieve our goal of providing universal access to healthcare8230; towards hassle-free and cashless outpatient care in our public hospitals, Singh said. This is among the recommendations of the high-level expert group set up by the Planning Commission on Universal Health Coverage.

He reiterated the commitment of increasing public expenditure on health to 2.5 of GDP. Interestingly,the budget that the health ministry has been allocated for 2012-13 is only 15 higher than last year when it stood at 1.9 of GDP. Singh emphasised the need for decentralised healthcare planning.