The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that Iraq has “achieved the polio transition process in full.”
“(Iraq) is the first country among the polio transition priority countries to achieve this remarkable feat,” the WHO said in a statement.
Iraq launched the polio transition process in 2019 with cooperation between the Iraqi Ministry of Health and the WHO.
Dr. Hanan Balkhy, the WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said Iraq achieved the polio transition “in a considerably short period of time.”
The transition involves immunization, and increasing public health functions, as well as transitioning from external to domestic financing.
“This success also proves that polio transition can be done in the rest of the six priority countries in the region, and hence contributes to sustain polio-free status in the country and in the world after the eradication of the poliovirus,” said Dr. Rana Hajjeh, the director of Program Management at the WHO Regional Office for the Mediterranean, as cited by a statement from the WHO.
Polio was eradicated in industrialized countries after the development of the poliovirus vaccine in the mid-1950s but it continues to exist in some developing countries, in particular in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
