Soon after the introduction of effective vaccines in the late
1950s (IPV) and early 1960s (OPV), polio was brought under control,
and practically eliminated as a public health problem in
industrialized countries.
During the 1970s; OPV was introduced worldwide and became a part of
the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), helping to control
the disease in many developing countries.
In 1988, the global goal to eradicate polio was launched. , The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), spearheaded by national governments, the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and UNICEF, is the single-largest, internationally-coordinated public health project the world has ever known.
In 1994, the World Health Organization (WHO) Region of the
Americas (36 countries) was certified polio-free, followed by the
WHO Western Pacific Region (37 countries and areas including China)
in 2000 and the WHO European Region (51 countries) in June 2002.
Today, the disease has been eliminated from most of the world, and
at this moment only seven countries world-wide remain
polio-endemic. At the same time, the areas of transmission are more
concentrated than ever - 98 percent of all global cases are found
in India, Nigeria and Pakistan.