mumbai heres some food for thought for a country that is dreaming of rubbing shoulders with the us and russia in the united nations security council in a couple of years india could instead be in the company of a few laggards from africa if it fails to boot out poliofor then every desi looking forward to a foreign visit and every visitor to the country may be forced to take a vaccine against the poliomyelitis virus that is what happens in a few selectsouth american and african countries that have failed to protect themselves from yellow feverour travel documents will have to mention we come from a country that still has the polio virusadditional municipal commissioner vijaysinh patankar saidthough maharashtra directorgeneral of health services subhash salunkhe said the travel advisory would only be one of those minor things even he could not play down the infamy of the country being held up as a public health disaster children from the developed world will have to continue getting vaccinated only because of our inability to control polioin a global village where viruses spread from one end of the world to another in the time it takes a flight to cover that distance polio in india will have two spinoffs an outbreak anywhere in the world has the potential to affect every other region the second is the diplomatic ignominy for a country trying others to endorse its un security council dreamsbut it is not that india has not been trying to bring down the incidence of polio the incidence of fresh cases has come down to 12 till date this year from a yearround total of 1600odd in 2002 the years 2003 and 2004 yielded 225 and 136 fresh cases respectively the poliomyelitis virus spreads through the faecal route a patients excreta is responsible for transmission of the virus the world is too closely connected to discount all possibilities of such a transmissiona doctor said saudi arabia recently reported three cases including a nigerian boy living near mecca after being poliofree for two yearsmost of the western world and developing nations have succeeded in rooting out polio but seven countries including india pakistan and nigeria still go on reporting polio health officials in delhi say india is close to its poliofree goal if we can ensure that there is no new case in may and june 2005 we are almost throughone of them said but states like bihar and uttar pradesh which report most of the new cases are a problemmaharashtra for instance has eradicated a virus that was common heresalunkhe said he however admitted that the last three cases reported in 2004 were of a strain p1 from upsuccesses like this prompted delhi officials to say they were confident of achieving zeroincidence in the next 12 months we have started using the monovalent vaccine targeting the p1 strain that is common in up and bihar as well as in three districts of maharashtra mumbai thane and raigad this specific