Anti-polio vaccinations in the third millennia

Poliomyelitis is a highly infectious viral disease, which mainly affects young children. In 1988, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution that committed all countries to polio eradication by the year 2000, launching the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The last naturally occurring case of wild polio virus type 2 infection was in October 1999 while the last case of wild polio virus type 3 was recorded in November 2012. In 2016 there were the lowest number of polio cases in recorded history (just 37) and this year we expect even fewer cases. Until the end of October 2017 only 12 cases were reported (the previous year, in this same period, 27 cases had been recorded). The eradication program did not progress smoothly: fundamentalism; religious opposition; civil war; outbreaks of other infectious diseases and circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses may favor the failure of vaccination programs. Through the enormous progress toward polio eradication made in these last years, such as the switch from the trivalent oral poliovirus vaccine to the bivalent oral poliovirus vaccine and the certification of the eradication of the wild polio virus type 2; the eradication efforts are at their final chapter, otherwise known as the polio endgame.