On Sept. 29, 1994, based on recommendations of the national certification committees and after review of surveillance and laboratory data, the ICCPE announced that wild poliovirus transmission has been interrupted in the Americas.

In 1993, regional vaccination coverage among children with at least three doses of oral poliovirus vaccine was 87%; 33 of 38 countries had achieved and maintained coverage of more than 80%.

Polio is the short name for poliomyelitis, a highly infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. There are three wild types of polioviruses, types 1, 2, and 3, and only two countries where the wild poliovirus type 1 is still endemic: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Recently the disease made headlines again when a case was detected in the United States in July 2022: an unvaccinated 20-year-old man was diagnosed with a type known as “vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV).” This is a strain related to the weakened live virus contained in the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

On August 23, 1991, Luis Fermin Tenorio Cortez, a child in Peru, was the last person to suffer poliomyelitis in the Americas when he was infected with wild poliovirus in the District of Pichinaki, in the Province of Chanchamayo, in the remote mountains of the Junín Department, nearly 400 kms from Lima.