India's purge-polio plan is limping.

(From The Times of India)

Byline: Rekha Dixit

MUMBAI: India will not meet the 2005 global deadline to eradicate polio, the authorities admit. Even as they embark upon the last phase of the Pulse Polio Immunisation drive today, they grudgingly acknowledge that it will be impossible to eliminate the crippling disease in the next couple of years. "India was among the last countries to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s,'' said Dr Nitin Shah, a member of the Indian Association of Paediatrics' immunisation committee.

"The same history is being repeated with polio.'' India's neighbours Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are already polio-free. India accounts for 85 …