The U.S. health secretary visits India January 13 to congratulate the nation for its efforts to combat polio. An entire year has passed without report of a single case of the disease, a milestone of success for the country’s immunization campaign.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius gives polio vaccine to an Indian child in New Delhi January 13. India has marked an entire year without a single case of polio reported, a major milestone for a country that reported more occurrences of the disease than any other just three years ago. India is one of only four countries where the poliovirus still survives in the wild, but a year without a case might take India off the list of endemic nations.

India has mounted an enormous effort to combat the disease, organizing immunization campaigns in which vaccine is distributed to as many as 170 million children in a matter of days. Stopping polio in a country as large and populous as India is also seen as a “massive boost” to the global campaign to completely eradicate the disease, according to the multination Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/iipdigital-en/index.html)