Half a century after the March of Dimes (a US charity organization that collects money for children) put the 20th century's most feared childhood disease on the road to eradication  , Bill Gates declared polio   his important job and challenged world leaders to finish the job. India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan now have active transmission   of the disease. Gates says the biggest problem with the success of the Global Polio Eradication program in those countries and elsewhere is lack of money. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plans to increase its $200 million annual contribution   by $102 million this year, Gates says. Gates recently met privately with Pakistan's President in Washington, D.C., to try to persuade him to provide full support for Pakistan's eradication plan. Children in the USA also are at risk, experts say. Parents who don't vaccinate   their children because they are fearful of vaccine side-effects create a large number of children who are likely to be harmed by the virus. "If you increase the number of unvaccinated children, you increase the chance that this virus will find new subjects," says David Oshinsky, Pulitzer Prized-winning author of Polio: An American Story. "We've got to get this vaccine into the mouths of children," says Bruce Aylward, head of the World Health Organization's eradication program. In 1988, when the World Health Organization launched the Global Polio Eradication program, the disease killed 350,000 children a year worldwide. By last year, the total dropped to fewer than 1,500 worldwide, Aylward says. If Gates provides the final push for polio eradication, he may be remembered as much for helping prevent polio as for founding Microsoft, Oshinsky says. "As long as there's polio anywhere, people everywhere are at risk," Aylawrd says. " What do we know about polio according to the text?
People in Nigeria don't take it seriously. It's now the most serious childhood disease. Great progress has been made in preventing it. There are few organizations helping to prevent it.