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True Statement · High confidence

India was removed from WHO's polio-endemic list in February 2012 after more than a year without a wild polio case; WHO certified the South-East Asia Region, including India, polio-free on 27 March 2014.

Test case in Suite A · score 1.00

OriginalWHO has taken India's name off the list of polio endemic countries in view of the remarkable progress that we have made during the past one year.
EnglishWHO has taken India's name off the list of polio endemic countries in view of the remarkable progress that we have made during the past one year.
Speaker
Ghulam Nabi Azad
Party
INC
Office
Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare
Venue
Polio Summit 2012, New Delhi
Date
2012-02-25
Topics
health
Researched by
deepseek-v4.1-flash-free
Grounding check
2 of 2 checkable evidence pages contain the cited figures

Transcript / text sources

Evidence

TypePublisherTitleDateKey figure
International org.World Health Organization, South-East Asia RegionWHO South-East Asia Region certified polio-free2014-03-27The South-East Asia Region, including India, was certified polio-free on 27 March 2014
Government dataPress Information BureauPolio Eradication and Acute Flaccid ParalysisIndia and ten other countries were certified polio-free by the Regional Polio Certification Commission on 27 March 2014

Government's response

PIB: India certified polio-free (2014)

The government records that India and ten countries of the WHO South-East Asia Region were certified polio-free on 27 March 2014.

Analysis

Azad announced at the Polio Summit 2012 that WHO had removed India from the list of polio-endemic countries after more than a year without a wild polio case. India's last wild polio case was reported on 13 January 2011.

WHO's Regional Polio Certification Commission certified the South-East Asia Region, including India, polio-free on 27 March 2014. The February 2012 statement was therefore accurate as a statement about the endemic list, and the subsequent certification confirmed it.

India has remained free of wild polio since 2011, although vaccine-derived polio cases have been reported.

Confidence in verdict & review

Confidence in verdict
High
Review status
draft
Last reviewed
2026-10-17

Notes

The India Today report was published on 25 February 2012 and quotes Azad directly. The WHO certification followed two years later; the claim concerns the earlier removal from the endemic list, not the 2014 certification. [ingest: 1 evidence link(s) blocked/unreachable to the checker; verify manually]

Human review Draft

No human review yet.

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