India investigates suspected polio in two toddlers
Uday Kumar Choudhary, chief medical officer for Darbhanga district, where the children live, said they were suffering from acute flaccid paralysis, a medical condition often connected to polio. Suspected polio cases are occasionally reported from rural and normally underdeveloped areas of India but the country has not reported a positive case since 2011 after a mammoth and successful years-long vaccination programme. The World Health Organisation officially certified India and 10 other Asian countries free of polio last March, hailed as a "momentous victory" after the country went three years without reporting a new case. India's poor sanitation, mass internal migration and dilapidated public health system made many experts believe it would be the last country to eradicate the disease, if at all.
