World Winning On Polio, Not AIDS

The world is likely to be free next year of polio — making it the second known disease after smallpox to be wiped out by mankind — but it's losing the war against AIDS, the U.S. health secretary said Thursday.

"We're on the precipice of accomplishing it," Tommy Thompson said of eliminating polio. He said he'd spent an encouraging day hearing Indian officials' and volunteers' plans to go door-to-door across the country, making sure all children under 5 are immunized.

"We're probably down to the last 1,000 cases, probably the most difficult to eradicate," he said at a news conference. The remaining cases are in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria and Niger. The last group of cases is hardest to deal with, he said, because poverty and lack of education prevent people from understanding the need for vaccinations.

India has reported only eight new polio cases this year, after 260 last year and more than 1,000 in 2002, he said.

When a worldwide effort began in 1988 to wipe out polio by 2005, there were 350,000 new polio cases in 125 countries. Technically, the world must be free of polio for three consecutive years before the disease is officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organization.

Still, Thompson said it would be a medical milestone to reach that first polio-free year.

"We have a great opportunity to eradicate polio, only the second disease mankind has been able to eradicate," he said, adding that polio would be wiped out "by the end of this year."

But as for AIDS, Thompson said: "We are losing this war."

He said 8,500 people die daily from HIV/AIDS "That's the same as 40 jumbo airliners crashing every day," he said. "And 14,000 more are coming down with AIDS every day."

Thompson is also chairman of the Global Fund, a 30-month-old organization that's collected billions of dollars and identified projects in 120 countries to fight polio, tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS.

India has been earmarked for about $130 million in aid from the Global Fund to fight those diseases, Thompson said.