Gates praises anti-polio effort in India

NEW DELHI — Bill Gates praised the Indian government's efforts to fight polio and predicted Wednesday that with the help of his public-health foundation, significant progress will be made in the battle to wipe out the disease.

Gates, who co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife, said India was on track to rid the country of polio and could be a model for other nations still struggling with the deadly disease.

Gates said India — a nation of 1.1 billion people — was doing a good job of fighting polio with immunization drives and an effective surveillance program that identifies cases early, and his foundation aimed to support the government's efforts.

"It's amazing what a large task this is," Gates told reporters in his first trip to India since stepping down from day-to-day management of Microsoft to devote his time to philanthropy. "Despite the challenges, I'm more convinced than ever that India will lead the way to the successful eradication of polio."

There have been 496 cases of polio in India so far this year, accounting for about 35 percent of polio cases worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Most of those are in the impoverished northern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where poor public-health facilities, shoddy infrastructure and strong monsoons have made immunization drives difficult.

Polio mostly strikes children younger than 5 and is spread when unvaccinated people come into contact with the feces of those with the virus, often through water. It usually attacks the nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and sometimes death.

According to government figures, India has immunized 172 million children against the disease.

"This is a case where the government is doing the right thing," Gates said. "It's just very difficult to get all the children immunized."

When the WHO and partners began their drive to eradicate polio in 1988, there were more than 350,000 annual cases worldwide. But that number has been slashed by more than 99 percent and the disease is endemic in only four countries: Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.

There have been 1,431 global cases of polio so far this year, up from 1,315 last year, according to the WHO.

The Gates Foundation has spent $400 million worldwide in polio-eradication efforts and Gates said the organization was committed to continuing the fight.