In 1988, the World Health Organization launched a twelve-year campaign to wipe out polio. Thirty years and several billion dollars over budget later, the campaign grinds on, vaccinating millions of children and hoping that each new year might see an end to the disease. But success remains elusive, against a surprisingly resilient virus, an unexpectedly weak vaccine and the vagaries of global politics, meeting with indifference from governments and populations alike. How did an innocuous campaign to rid the world of a crippling disease become a hostage of geopolitics? Why do parents refuse to vaccinate their children against polio? And why have poorly paid door-to-door healthworkers been assassinated? Thomas Abraham reports on the ground in search of answers.

Elimination of measles and poliomyelitis diseases from the globe is a priority goal of the World Health Organization. For the first time, in a single volume comprising thirty-one well-documented chapters, internationally recognized experts provide a state-of-the-art treatment of these two important viral diseases. The book offers a wide range of new findings and references on the latest advances regarding the measles and poliomyelitis: • global and molecular genetic epidemiology, characteristics and diseases surveillance • all available vaccines and research to produce more safe and more potent-biotechnology vaccines • immunization programmes, considering the available vaccines and possibility of vaccinal associations in strategy to eliminate/eradicate these diseases • immunity to infections and immunogenicity of vaccines • virus genomes organization and antigenic structures related to vaccine characteristics, stressing their role in immunization strategies • needs of global cooperation, using all available resources, vaccines and strategies to achieve the global control of the diseases. It is addressed to all public health professionals concerned with measles and poliomyelitis control, especially in hospitals, clinics, governmental health services, international health services, centers of infectious diseases, research institutes, medical schools, vaccine producers and experts in immunization strategies and programmes.