Despite challenges in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the polio virus is still endemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is confident that polio could be eradicated within 12 months.

• If wiped out, the polio virus will become the only second human-hosted virus to be eradicated since smallpox ended in 1980.
• Just nine cases of the virus have been recorded this year so far, two in Afghanistan and seven in Pakistan.
• Ever since the global polio eradication initiative started in 1988, thousands of children from across the world were saved from wild polio virus that paralysed them.
• The WHO has been concentrating in key areas known to be reservoirs for the virus, Karachi city in Pakistan and two cross-border corridors, around Quetta Block and in the Peshawar district.
• Since the start of the global polio eradication initiative in 1988, transmission of the wild polio virus, which used to paralyse hundreds of thousands of children every year, has ceased in all countries apart from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• There have been false dawns in this battle, such as in 2013, when the virus re-emerged in Nigeria, Syria and Iraq, where it had previously been eradicated. All three are now free from polio once again.

The WHO is concentrating its efforts in three areas known to be reservoirs for the virus – the Pakistani city of Karachi and two cross-border corridors, around Quetta Block and in the Peshawar district.