Parents carrying their children queue along a snow-covered road outside the health centre to receive a dose of polio vaccine drops during a nationwide Pulse Polio Immunisation (PPI) drive in a remote village in Budgam. Over 1.9 million children under five will receive the oral polio vaccine on March 3 across 11,000 booths, with vaccines dispatched to snow-affected areas through choppers in Jammu and Kashmir. Senior health officials told local media that about 45,000 healthcare workers would be involved in the process to ensure no child was left behind. India rolled out the Pulse Polio Immunisation Programme on October 2, 1994, when the country accounted for around 60 percent of the global polio cases. Within two decades, India received 'polio-free certification' from the World Health Organisation, along with the entire Southeast Asia Region, on March 27, 2014, with the last polio case being reported in Howrah, in eastern India's West Bengal state, on January 13, 2011. India conducts one nationwide and two sub-national vaccination days for polio every year to maintain population immunity against wild poliovirus and to sustain its polio-free status.
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