That same year the world embarked on a campaign to enter the 21st century polio-free, a goal the World Summit for Children endorsed in 1990. Polio had already disappeared in many countries, but not in China. Although Bangladesh, India and Pakistan together accounted for more than half the world's cases, many other countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East were polio-endemic. In 1995, China reported only one case of laboratory-confirmed polio caused by wild poliovirus, and even that case, occurring on the border with neighbouring Myanmar, was due to an 'imported' virus. Polio-free status can be officially certified when active surveillance reveals neither polio cases nor the circulation of wild polioviruses in sewage, for instance for at least three years.
China is nearly polio-free.
But even as China moves towards eradication, it is sobering to remember that in 1988, when the epidemic struck down Qitao, the country reported 667 cases. The very next year, a nationwide epidemic occurred, and polio paralysed almost 10,000 children in 1989 and 1990. China has taken both ordinary and extraordinary measures to reduce such a high case-load to the single wild poliovirus infection reported in 1995. In terms of sheer numbers, the NIDs were especially impressive, immunizing, for instance, a record 83 million children under four years over two consecutive days in 1994. In December 1993, NIDs had delivered 82 million vaccinations.