World Polio Day is celebrated on October 24th. It was established by Rotary International to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a vaccine against poliomyelitis.
Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2020
Key-Points
As per the WHO, since 1980, the cases of wild poliovirus have decreased by over 99.9 per cent as a result of vaccination efforts made around the world.
World Polio Day was established by Rotary International over a decade ago to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop the vaccine against the disease.
Polio is a crippling and potentially deadly disease that affects the nervous system.
There are three variants of the poliovirus, numbered 1 to 3.
For a country to be declared polio-free, the wild transmission of all three kinds has to be stopped. For eradication, cases of both wild and vaccine-derived polio infection have to be reduced to zero. India was declared polio-free in January 2014, after three years of zero cases.
