Since its inception in the 1970's, EPI in the Western Pacific has greatly evolved in many areas.
While EPI initially focused on building sustainable routine immunization systems to protect children against common childhood diseases through administration of vaccines during infancy, achieving by 1988 less than 80% coverage of children receiving the basic set of vaccines, in 1988, when the WHO World Health Assembly (WHA) and the Western Pacific RCM endorsed resolutions to eradicate poliomyelitis (WHA 41.28 and WPR/RC39.R15), WPR - EPI embraced a new era of eradication, elimination and accelerated control of specific diseases and as a result of those efforts, the last indigenous case of poliomyelitis occurred in 1997 and poliomyelitis eradication was certified on 29 October 2000. The poliomyelitis-free status has been maintained since although several episodes of imported wild poliovirus occurred and vaccine derived polioviruses (VDPV) emerged in areas of low coverage. None of these events though resulted in sustained poliovirus transmission.
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Last update: September 2009