Polio topped the list of priorities at the United Nations on Wednesday as humanitarian agencies and business leaders laid plans and established a countdown for eradicating the virus from earth by 2005.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says it has raised $550 million of the $1 billion it will take to carry out the final phase of the eradication plan, first unveiled by the World Health Assembly in 1988.

The WHO and UNICEF, the UN's children's fund, expect the number of countries where the polio virus is transmitted to drop to 20 countries from 30 countries by the end of 2000.

Among the remaining countries where transmissions are taking place, 16 are in Africa, many in armed conflict zones, and four are in Asia.

Confined to a wheelchair because of the virus, Thaddeus Farrow, son of actress and UN Children's Fund special representative Mia Farrow, was helped by UN secretary general Kofi Annan to start a specially-designed countdown clock that will track the number of reported polio cases through 2005.

The clock, standing 11 feet (3.3 metres) high, currently shows just under 1,200 cases of polio confirmed so far this year. It became the symbol of the gathering, the Global Polio Partners summit.

The number of confirmed cases in 1999 dropped to 7,000, a 95 percent decline since 1988. The clock is expected to show no cases by 2005.

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general of the WHO, said the eradication plans include intensifying supplementary immunisation activities; establishing certification-standard surveillance; safe containment of all laboratory stocks of the virus; a timetable for stopping immunisations; and strengthening and expanding the immunisation routine as part of a child's primary health care.

Polio can strike at any age. However, children under the age of three are the majority of its victims. Once contracted, its effects are almost always irreversible.

The virus enters the body through the mouth and slowly destroys the body's nerve cells, causing paralysis and in some cases death by asphyxiation as the muscles controlling the breathing process are cut-off from the central nervous system.

A polio vaccine, which required injection, was developed in 1955 by Dr. Jonas Salk. In 1961, Dr. Albert Sabin developed a variation which can be taken orally.

The effort to eradicate the virus, along with the certification that the world is polio-free, is being led by the WHO and includes several UN agencies, the US Centres for Disease Control, as well as fund-raising efforts by Rotary International and business leaders.

Highlighting the dangers the eradication workers face, many of whom are volunteers, UN secretary general Annan said^ UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy said the emphasis is on synchronizing national immunisation days in 17 west and central African nations over the next two months. The effort is expected to reach 70 million children under the age of five in one week.

"It is an effort that will result in the highest coverage ever achieved in that region, one that we believe will dramatically reduce polio transmission," Bellamy said.

Bellamy said sustained immunisation efforts over the next 24 months are critical for meeting the deadline of total eradication by the end of 2005.

"I remember my parents not letting me go to the swimming pool because they were afraid that I would get polio," said

Ted Turner, vice chairman of Time Warner Inc., and founder of the United Nations Foundation.

Turner noted that once polio is eradicated, the world will save $1.5 billion every year in immunisation costs.

Turner, who also thanked the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for its contribution to the eradication effort, called "on the private sector, those who have been blessed by more wealth than they need, to make major contributions to this cause and to share the joy and the triumph that we're going to have when polio joins smallpox as one of the two diseases that has been eradicated."

Rotary International has contributed $378 billion so far and has committed to a total of $500 million by 2005.

(From ww. chinadaily.com)