In September 2017, the date of the next "last ever" National Immunisation Day (NID) for Polio was announced as Sunday January 28th 2018. We are going again and we will be leading the team going to Kolkata (teams are also going to Delhi, Amritsar and Bhiwadi).
This is the sixth time we have participated in a National Immunisation Day, hence we feel reasonably experienced in most aspects of immunisation. It is also the fourth time that we will have led a group, something which we have learnt is a hard working pleasure. It is however a pleasure greatly enhanced by the fact that many of those who have been with us on many of the earlier immunisations, choose to come with us again - thank-you to them, you know who you are.
India has not so far, been brave enough to actually have a last ever immunisation event because they judge that they do not have an established enough local health centre system which can guarantee to serve all children and also Polio is still endemic in nearby Pakistan and Afghanistan. Every year they get closer and closer to achieving this and every year the number of Polio cases in the world further reduces but it has not yet got to zero and therefore the world is not yet Polio Free.
It is also the case that Polio is still endemic in three countries with 22 cases in 2017, all in Pakistan and Afghanistan. For Polio to be declared a disease of the past and to become the second human disease to be eliminated, there has to be a three year period with no cases of polio anywhere in the world.
There also are links here to earlier blogs we have written about taking part in NIDs. For those unused to blogs, look to the right of this page in the January / February sections for each year and you will find a number of entries – if they are not showing individually, then click on the arrow mark to the left of the word January or February and they should then show at the bottom of that month's list of blog entries.
Alternatively, you can get to the other entries by clicking on the appropriate “here” in the list below.
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