Since 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has succeeded in reducing the number of polio cases from an annual 350,000 in more than 125 countries, to just 519 in 2007. The number of countries that still suffer badly from polio has dropped from 125 to just four at the moment.

Thanks to a lot of effort over nearly 10 years, Vietnam successfully eliminated polio in 2000.

The national extended immunization programme from 1993 to 1999 provided more than 99 percent of children under five years old with two doses of polio vaccine.

Since 1997, Vietnam has seen no new cases of the wild polio virus, and was praised by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the first countries to successfully eradicate the disease.

As wild polio virus can still spread from countries that have polio to polio-free countries, Vietnam has developed a strategy to protect its record over the 2005-2010 period.