An increase in polio cases in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is setting back global hopes of eradication.

In 2006, by the end of October, 360 people, most of them children under five, had contracted polio in this state, compared with 66 in the whole of 2005.

An article [1] in Science magazine suggests that population density and poor sanitation may be a factor. Researcher Nicholas Grassley of Imperial College London, told SciDev Net: “Generally improving sanitation is a very important to controlling the spread of not only polio but also enteric diseases. It is an important public health priority, buy may take longer to achieve in India.”

Children receive the oral polio vaccine, but when they have diarrhoea it can be washed out before it can protect them.

India now has almost a third of the global total of polio cases. Almost all cases are in areas where sanitation is an issue and most of the children belong to poor families with poor nutrition.

[1] Grassly, N.C. … [et al.] (2006). New strategies for the elimination of polio from India. Science ; vol. 314, no. 5802 ; p. 1150-1153. DOI: 10.1126/science.1130388

Related news: SMS campaign to save water in Madhya Pradesh, Source Weekly 24 May 2006; Argentina, Buenos Aires: open sewers a health and environmental risk, Source Weekly, 16 May 2006

Contact: Nicholas C. Grassly, Dept. of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, UK, n.grassly@imperial.ac.uk.

Source: Scidev.net, 27 Nov 2006; BBC, 25 Oct 2006

Tags: water-related diseases