Cuba Completing Anti-polio Campaign
Coinciding with the World Health Day, Cuba is immunizing from Friday 524,000 children in the second stage of the anti-poliomyelitis vaccination campaign.

Nearly 384,000 under three-year-old toddlers, already vaccinated in February, will receive a second portion while the medication will be reactivated for over 140,000 nine-year-old children.

The antigen has been administrated here to more than eight million people in the past decades.

According to the World Health Organization, although global polio cases dropped from 350,000 cases in 1988 to 1,180 in 2004, they increased anew last year.

In 1962, Cuba became the first American nation declared a territory free of poliomyelitis, which is caused by a virus that invades the nervous system causing atrophy and paralysis.