PAHO prescribes partnership for health.

• Author: Okey, Roberta
• Position: Pan American Health Organization

He walks with a moderate limp; his left leg is thinner and misshapen. But his friends don't seem to notice; or if they do, they don't say anything. He plays in the middle of the dirt road, surrounded by other boys his age, in front of the Recreo Picaflor bar and restaurant on the main thoroughfare. He lives above the store-front with his parents and grandmother.

Today is hot and dry. That means the visitor he is to receive from Lima, which is ten hours away on a good day, won't be slowed by rain which--when it comes--washes down from the sierra, spilling across the unpaved roads and rendering them impassable.

Dr. Roger Zapata periodically comes to call on five-year-old Luis Fermi Tenorio at his home in the remote mountain town of Pichanaki, located in the Department of Junin, Peru. He examines him on a metal table in the town's makeshift clinic, where he talks soothingly while bending the child's legs gently to assess the flexibility in movement. Luis tolerates the exercise, knowing that if he's good Dr. Zapata customarily rewards him with a new toy.

Once the doctor finishes, he presents Luis with a new jeep truck and a big blue ball. The boy gathers them into his arms and leaves the clinic in search of his friends. He may or may not be aware of the reason for all the attention, but for Dr. Zapata, Luis holds special interest: He is the Americas' last documented case of poliomyelitis, an infectious disease caused by wild poliovirus that attacks the central nervous system. Luis became ill at age two, possibly contracting the disease during one of the rains or following a common cold; no one is really certain.

Dr. Zapata is a member of the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) team, an initiative launched by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) back in 1977 in order to make the enormous benefits of immunization available to all children, particularly those in developing countries. Today, EPI has team members throughout the countries of the Americas who work with national immunization services to help them reach the goal of vaccinating all children under the age of one year. Vaccines in the program include measles, DPT (diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus), BCG (tuberculosis), and OPV (oral polio vaccine). Thanks to EPI's work, a cadre of trained epidemiologists in all countries and a strong regional network of virology laboratories have significantly strengthened the overall health infrastructure of PAHO's member countries.

Following a meeting last August at PAHO's headquarters in Washington, D.C., the chairman of the International Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication (ICCPE), Dr. Frederick C. Robbins, announced that "based on the impressive evidence presented, the ICCPE concludes that wild poliovirus has been interrupted in the Americas." News of this historical medical triumph was followed by a PAHO press conference in September attended by the heads of the U.S. Agency for International Development...