The news is not just that Uttar Pradesh accounts for as many as 255 polio cases out of the 283 reported across the country this year. The news is that Moradabad and five neighbouring districts in western UP, which account for 70 per cent of India’s cases, have emerged as the exporter of the polio virus, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“In 2006, western UP is the only area in the world with a geographically expanding polio epidemic that is actively exporting polio to previously polio-free countries, like Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh and Nepal. The virus originating from here has also been detected in polio-free area like Madhya Pradesh in India,” states the WHO website relating to polio eradication.

What WHO indicates is that the virus strain found in those countries and in Madhya Pradesh has a lineage linked to that found in western Uttar Pradesh. Nine countries— Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Namibia, Niger, Nepal, and Democratic Republic of Congo — have reported polio cases because of “importations” this year, and four say they have got it from India, more precisely western Uttar Pradesh. The cases in Congo and Namibia have been genetically inked to a virus strain originating from Angola, which in turn had got it from western Uttar Pradesh in 2005.

India is among the four countries in the world identified by WHO as polio-endemic. The others are Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. And Moradabad and adjoining regions stand out for the high incidence of cases, which took up by 29 from last year’s figure the number of cases reported from Uttar Pradesh.

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