Initiative to vaccinate 250 million children by 2005

GENEVA -- Health ministers from six countries where polio is still endemic announced plans at the World Health Organization Thursday to immunize 250 million children during 2004 and wipe out the final reservoirs of the disease.\nInternational campaigns have brought polio -- which used to paralyze and cripple hundreds of thousands of children every year -- to the verge of elimination. But the disease has persisted in a few countries -- even increased and spreading back into some areas in recent years.\nHealth ministers from the six nations signed a declaration committing themselves to the plan but added they will need an extra $150 million in donations beyond the money already available under the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.\n"Nigeria is determined to break the chains of polio transmission for the sake of our children, our neighbors' children and the children of the world," said Nigerian Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo, whose country has the largest polio problem.\nMultiple immunization campaigns are needed to immunize newborns and to ensure no children are missed.\nIn 1988, when countries first started work on eradicating polio, around 1,000 children were infected every day. Only 677 cases were reported worldwide for the whole year of 2003.\n"We have a unique window of opportunity in which to end polio forever," said India's Health Minister Sushma Swaraj in a message from New Delhi, India. "We will seize this opportunity by reaching each and every child with vaccine."\nAlong with Nigeria and India, the declaration was signed by Pakistan, Afghanistan, Niger and Egypt, where polio is considered endemic.\nSwaraj said preliminary data showed there had already been an 84 percent reduction in polio cases in India in 2003, compared with the previous year.