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Vaccination against polio should not be stopped.

Chumakov K, Ehrenfeld E, Wimmer E, Agol VI

Konstantin Chumakov is at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration, 1401 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, USA.

The striking 50-year-long decline in the incidence of poliomyelitis has stalled in the past 7 years, which has led to calls for an urgent re-assessment of eradication and post-eradication campaign strategies. The current plan of eliminating the circulation of wild poliovirus so that further immunization will be unnecessary does not take into account recent scientific data and political realities that limit the likelihood that this strategy can sustain prevention of the disease. It is crucially important that high levels of population immunity are maintained against polio in the foreseeable future.

Published 16 November 2007 in Nat Rev Microbiol, 5(12): 952-8.
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