Dina Ezzat cheers a polio-free Egypt A refreshing break from the ceaseless stream of bad news, finally: together with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Egyptian Ministry of Health declared Egypt a polio-free country. Nadia, a civil servant, typified the average reaction: "I will still vaccinate my children, but you can't imagine how great this news is -- far fewer chances of them being harmed." Stepping out of a mosque- sponsored clinic where her one-year-old was being checked for a cold, Nadia went on, smiling wearily: "Isn't it enough having to worry about problems like bird flu; at least one thing is solved for good. That's wonderfully cheering." The last polio diagnosis took place in 2004 when a little boy named Adam, then two, missed the relevant vaccination. Both the ministry and WHO have since kept a watchful eye for possible cases of the disease; all test results were negative. The declaration was made on Wednesday at the WHO Eastern Mediterranean headquarters in Cairo, in the presence of, among other dignitaries, the Cairo WHO operation head Adel Al-Dajzerei, Minister of Health Hatem El-Gabali and Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, the principal sponsor of the two-decade polio immunisation campaign part of a global initiative launched in 1988, and spearheaded by UNICEF, Rotary International and the Atlanta-based Centre for Disease Control Prevention. It brought to a close an intensive week of festivities, the result of government and civil society institutions working hard in close coordination with each other. When the initiative started, polio was endemic in 125 countries -- with an estimated 350,000 cases per year. As is the case now in Egypt, already the image is much brighter. Faten, a 38-year-old school teacher infected as a child, imbues the happy moment with poignant twist: "I wish there was such a campaign in my time." Though by now fully resigned to her disability, a successful career as a remarkably popular art teacher and the adoration of many nephews and nieces having finally reconciled her to it, Faten's childhood and adolescence, she says, were marred by self-hate and peer envy, her relationship with fellow school girls, and eventually with society as a whole, marked by excessive sympathy or ridicule on the one hand, resentment and despair on the other: "All of a sudden, everybody was standing up and offering their seat to the cripple. I hated it." The psychological damage was such Faten even refused to get married, which is why she has ended up motherless after all: "Every time a man proposed, I thought they were doing it because a family member asked." She became overweight, she insists -- a somewhat exaggerated statement -- because she could not move around enough. "Crippled, fat and ugly," Faten sighed. "That's how I saw myself for many years." Given the magnitude of its impact, it is doubtful whether many sufferers have survived the disease as well as Faten. Future generations are safer, but, as Al-Djazaeri warned, sustaining the current achievement still requires much, uninterrupted effort. To which Mrs Mubarak, for one, made a clear commitment, stressing that the declaration "does not mean that the challenge is over", for many countries were infected again after declaring their territories free of the virus. The commitment finds support in the work of the ministry and civil society who, targeting parents with children under five, will resume their media campaigns, notifying people of immunisation dates; hundreds of thousands of health workers will be knocking on doors to the same end. "Our resolve," said Mrs Mubarak, "will not falter." Yet it was hard not to remember, in the context of fear of the disease striking back, the deplorable sanitary conditions of many parts of the country, along with the poverty and illiteracy that go with it. All those who spoke emphasised the need for other, complementary campaigns to keep polio at bay: potable water, literacy and economic empowerment. Short of which -- and the speakers said so in so many word -- Egypt will not be safe. The oldest record of polimyelists is found on a Pharaonic stelae dating back to 1400 BC, a time when the disease appears to have been highly endemic, with 10,000-15,000 cases per year. Oral vaccination was first introduced into Egypt in 1968; vaccine use rose steadily over the next decade, when the campaign was finally introduced; and Egypt has been among the leading countries in the effective implementation of the campaign. As Mrs Mubarak said, finally, "let us look to the future and hope for greater success. Let us hope," and this sounded rather more to the point, "that this success story will be replicated in many fields."
