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This is News Plus Special English. I'm Marc Cavigli in Beijing.
India has marked three years since its last reported polio case, putting the country on course to being formally declared free of the disease later this year.
India has made great strides against polio in recent years through a rigorous vaccination campaign.
But for many in the country where polio victims with withered, twisted limbs are not a rare sight on the streets, these advances have come too late.
Polio is a vaccine-preventable disease that has been eradicated in most parts of the world. But it still causes paralysis and death in some countries, including Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Polio usually strikes children under age 5 due to contaminated drinking water.
The virus attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and even death.
Widespread poverty, dense population, poor sanitation, and a lack of public health system made the task of reaching out to every child much more difficult.
About 3 million volunteers and medical workers have been involved in the nationwide campaign and the number of polio cases in the country have come down from 740 in 2009 to 42 in 2010.
We stay in India. The country is scrambling to protect its beleaguered tiger population after several big cats tested positive for a deadly virus.
Canine distemper virus is common among dogs but deadly to other carnivores. The virus killed at least four tigers and several other animals across northern and eastern India last year.
This is bad news for wild tigers which already endangered by rampant poaching and shrinking habitat.
India undergoes breakneck development to accommodate the staggering growth of its 1.2 billion people. The economic development and population growth means more people and dogs are coming even closer to wildlife.
There is no vaccine for the big cats. The authorities are considering a massive campaign to vaccinate dogs against the disease.
The virus, a close relative of measles, is associated mostly with domestic dogs though it has infected and ravaged other carnivore populations.
In the late 1970s, it brought the U.S. black-footed ferret to the brink of extinction. In Tanzania in 1994, an epidemic likely introduced by tourists' dogs wiped out at least a third of the 3,000-strong African lion population in Serengeti National Park.
India is home to more than half of the world's estimated 3,200 tigers. Despite dozens of tiger reserves in place, the number of tigers have fallen sharply, from an estimated 7,000 in the 1990s, when their habitat was more than twice as large.
