There's’s good news and bad on the polio front. Only eight cases have been reported in the first four months of 2004 — the setback, four of the eight have been recorded in Bihar, the new ‘‘hot zone’’ in the polio battle.Experts believe the statistics has much to do with the apathy of authorities in the state. What is worse, the cases are spread across the state, in Patna, Aurangabad, Muzaffarpur and Purnea. ‘‘The state does not even have problems like those faced in Uttar Pradesh, where a particular community was refusing administration of the polio vaccine,’’ an official said. The blame, officials say, rests with the state authorities. A member of the India Expert Advisory Group (IEAG) for polio, held on March 26 and 27, said the state lacks political will. The group, comprising representatives of the government, WHO, Unicef, USAID, CDC and Rotary International, maintained that the ‘‘quality of the January and February pulse polio rounds appears to have been good, with notable exceptions like Bihar’’.The committee tags Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka as high-risk areas but puts special emphasis on the situation in Bihar and the status of polio control there . ‘‘Of these areas, Bihar stands out. After fairly steady progress in the past, quality of both surveillance and immunisation activities in Bihar has recently deteriorated significantly. Transmission has already been detected in widely dispersed areas in 2004 and the recent NID round in Bihar has been of the worst quality since 2002,’’ the report said. ‘‘Efforts must be made to ensure that Bihar returns to achieving consistent high-quality work.’’The committee also called upon the President to authorise briefings for state governors in all infected and high-risk states and recommended that ‘‘highest priority be given to Bihar’’. The IEAG has also recommended that ‘the union secretary of family welfare should consider convening a special briefing with the state secretary for health and family welfare of Bihar. The committee has urged the state to pass on the findings of the monthly report to the group.Uttar Pradesh, considered the traditional polio reservoir, has reported just one case in 2004. Bihar, while leading the tally so far, had reported only 18 cases in 2003, compared to 88 in Uttar Pradesh, 36 in Karnataka, 28 in West Bengal and 21 in Andhra Pradesh. While UP had reported an epidemic in 2002 with 1,242 cases, Bihar was a distant second with 121 cases.
