Polio strikes the poorest communities in the world.

Bruce Aylward How we'll stop polio for good

Bruce Aylward Oops. Jon, polio's almost been eradicated.

Here's a great idea to spread End polio now.

Or polio? How many of you remember the iron lung?

This is not a curable disease like polio that you can prevent with a vaccination.

And Afghanistan, Afghanistan, we think has probably stopped polio repeatedly.

Polio today has become an example of the complex problems plaguing Pakistan s state and its society.

This is a real concern, as children in Bulgaria were paralyzed only last year due to polio imported from India.

Likewise, a campaign led by Rotary International and several partners has nearly eradicated polio.

Pakistan along with neighboring Afghanistan and Nigeria are among the few countries where Polio still remains endemic.

I was also given vaccines to prevent life threatening infections such as polio and measles.

As a result, thousands of children died each year from preventable diseases such as measles, polio, and malaria.

Smallpox was eradicated even in the most remote impoverished countries polio is well is on its way to eradication. Immunization campaigns, when properly funded, have reached huge proportions of very poor children.

Just a quarter century ago, polio was endemic in 125 countries and paralyzed more than 1,000 children every day.

Smallpox was eradicated even in the most remote impoverished countries polio is well is on its way to eradication.

In a few other countries, the disease has been sporadically reintroduced by travelers from regions where polio has not yet been eliminated.

The country is one of only three nations after Afghanistan and Nigeria with the polio virus still endemic on their soil.

Building these routine immunization systems has already helped us to eradicate diseases like polio and all but one type of measles.

Vaccines have eradicated smallpox, pushed polio to the verge of eradication, and saved millions of children from measles, diphtheria, tetanus, and other deadly and disabling diseases.

In the remaining three countries where polio has not yet been eliminated Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria there were just 223 reported cases in 2012.

So, as polio nears eradication, the world is on the verge of delivering the first global public good of the new millennium.

And it happened so fast in the United States, however, that even just last month Jon Stewart said this Jon Stewart Where is polio still active?

To protect every child, polio must be eradicated globally. Once it is, we may eventually be able to stop immunization against the disease, and save up to US 1.5 billion every year in averted immunization and treatment costs.

BA The four places where you saw, that we've never stopped northern Nigeria, northern India, the southern corner of Afghanistan and bordering areas of Pakistan they're going to be the toughest.

Given the progress made in expanding vaccination programs in recent years, this revelation represents a unique opportunity for the global community, particularly as we begin to close the lid on polio. With poliovirus now endemic in just three remaining countries, we are already beginning to use the momentum that has carried eradication efforts so far to broaden the scope of routine immunization to reach more of the poorest children.

Given the progress made in expanding vaccination programs in recent years, this revelation represents a unique opportunity for the global community, particularly as we begin to close the lid on polio.

The vaccine summit builds on a commitment last year by nearly 200 countries to eradicate polio, develop new and improved vaccines at affordable prices, and deliver them to every child by 2020.

As the number of people who have witnessed firsthand the effects of measles and other childhood diseases such as mumps, rubella, polio, and whooping cough has declined, so has society s commitment to keeping them away.

I remember working at a pediatric ward as a teenager and watching children die from diseases like polio, measles, and tetanus all easily prevented by vaccines.

Polio is almost completely eradicated. But as Bruce Aylward says Almost isn't good enough with a disease this terrifying. Aylward lays out the plan to continue the scientific miracle that ended polio in most of the world and to snuff it out everywhere, forever.

Nobody would have said 50 years ago that apartheid would have gone in 1990, or that the Berlin wall would have fallen at the turn of the '80s and '90s, or that polio could be eradicated, or that perhaps 60 years ago nobody would have said that a man could have gone to the moon.