India ‘polio free’ despite death

The death of a 10-month-old baby in Maharashtra state’s Latur District on Saturday blemishes India’s record in fighting polio but won’t impact the country’s march toward being certified polio-free. On Jan. 13, India completed two years since its last wild polio case, which was in West Bengal state. The World Health Organization says for a country to be declared polio-free, it must complete three years without a single case of polio caused by the wild polio virus. The solution is to keep “routine immunization very high,” said Naveen Thacker, a doctor and polio expert. He said there “is nothing to panic” about in the Maharashtra case as there is no outbreak. The baby died from vaccine-derived polio. If a population is fully immunized, it will be protected against vaccine-derived and wild polio virus, the WHO says. In the oral polio vaccine, a weak polio virus is used to develop immunity against wild polio. The...