India Certified Polio-Free

In what has been called one of the greatest achievements in global health, the World Health Organization has certified India polio-free on Thursday. The country has gone three years without an endemic case of polio. The nation was home to roughly half the world’s polio cases just five years ago, and was seen as a particularly large challenge because of population density and sanitation issues. The last reported case was a two-year-old girl paralyzed by polio in West Bengal in January 13, 2011.