parts of Asia, but since 2001, incidence rates have plateaued, with 1,0002,000 people developing poliomyelitis each year worldwide.To eliminate those cases, the GPEI must ensure the vaccination of a majority of children in hard-to-reach and war-torn areas such as Kandahar province in Afghanistan. But the global economic crisis has created a $945-million gap of unfulfilled commitments in the initiatives budget for 201213, which is already forcing the campaign to limit vaccination in neighbouring countries such as Niger and Tajikistan . Although about one-third of that funding gap looks set to be filled, Aylward warned that shortfalls in the second half of this year could compel the GPEI to pull back in Afghanistan and Pakistan, too.ExpandSOURCE: WHOIf the money doesnt come and they cant build these walls of immunity, there is a risk that polio will implant itself and start circulating in neighbouring countries, says David Heymann, director of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House in London, and former head of the WHO polio-eradication effort. Chinas western province of Xinjiang, for example, is fending off an outbreak that originated in Pakistan. The GPEI estimates that if polio is not eradicated and mass vaccination ceases, the number of children paralysed each year will rise to 200,000 within a decade, and unvaccinated adults will be vulnerable to a more aggressive form of the disease, as they are in Xinjiang.On 25 May the World Health Assembly passed a mostly symbolic measure declaring polio a programmatic emergency for global public health, but progress in some countries has persuaded GPEI officials that eradication is within reach. India has not recorded a case of polio in 16 months: an unmitigated victory given that the countrys high population density and poor hygiene has in the past made it ripe for the spread of the virus. A wide roll-out of new vaccines that effectively target the strains in circulation seems to have won the battle, says Nicholas Grassly, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London. Indias success also shows that the barriers are not technical, they are about management, implementation, oversight and commitment to eradicating polio, he adds.Last year, Pakistan seemed to pose a major obstacle to eradication, not least because flooding in 2010 displaced millions of people, many of whom missed scheduled vaccinations. The programme was also hampered by widespread suspicion after the revelation last July that the US Central Intelligence Agency may have used a vaccination campaign to obtain DNA from children living in Osama bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad . A doctor involved in that effort, Shakil Afridi, was last week sentenced to 33 years in prison.The incident caused support for vaccination to plummet temporarily in Balochistan province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where most of Pakistans polio cases occurred last year, says Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who maintains a Vaccine Confidence Index for Pakistan and other developing countries.Getting betterBut the country now seems to be making progress, recording just 16 cases of polio so far in 2012 half as many as this time last year,