Eleven South Asian countries, including Bangladesh has been declared polio-free by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The historic announcement has come from a meeting of The Regional Certification Committee in New Delhi on Thursday afternoon.
Among others, Dr Supamit Chunsuttiwat, chairperson of SEA regional certification commission for polio eradication, and Dr Suniti Acharya, member, were present in the meeting.
The other 10 countries that were declared polio free are India, Nepal, Indonesia, Myanmar, Bhutan, North Korea, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and East Timor.
As no single country can be certified as polio-free; a WHO Region is certified as a whole after all its countries sustain no new transmissions for 3 years.
It is learnt that WHO required all the member nations of the Southeast Asia region to be free of polio patients for at least three years, before the countries could be eligible for polio-free status.
Tajul Islam Bari Dr Tajul Islam Bari, recent past programme manager of the Expanded Program of Immunization (EPI) told the Dhaka Tribune that six SEARO countries – Bhutan, North Korea, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and East Timor – have been polio-free for more than 15 years, while the rest have remained polio free for different time periods (Bangladesh and Indonesia since 2006, Myanmar since 2007, Nepal since 2010, and India since 2011).
In order to get the polio eradication certificates the national certification committees of each member country had submitted necessary documents to the Regional Certification Committee (RCC) meeting on March 26-27.
At present, only three countries are polio-endemic: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. According to a WHO report, cases of polio have decreased by over 99% since 1988.