A child in the northern city of Kano in Nigeria receives an oral polio vaccination (Flickr | Gates Foundation)

February is a pretty bleak month: the holidays are over, most of us have already failed at our New Year’s Resolutions, and it is waaaaaay too cold outside (at least here in the northern hemisphere). But, the only thing more exciting than last week’s blizzard-that-wasn’t in New York City, is the progress that has been made toward seeing the end of polio.

Polio is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Back in the first half of the 20th century, polio scares wreaked havoc across the United States and left thousands of Americans hospitalized. In 1988 the global community joined together to create the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which aims to see the end of polio forever. Polio is now 99.9% eradicated. Here is a quick snapshot of what the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has accomplished this year.

First, It has now been more than a year since Syria had a case of wild poliovirus, suggesting that immunization campaigns may have stopped the outbreak that began there in 2013.

(Flickr | UNICEF)

And Nigeria, the only country in Africa to never have stopped wild poliovirus transmission, has reached six months without a case.

(Flickr | Gates Foundation)

Earlier last month, Global Poverty Project’s Global Policy & Advocacy team was in Europe meeting with key partners to assess the polio program’s progress and plan for the coming year.

In 2015, the program will work to protect the gains in the Middle East and Africa, while ensuring that Pakistan, home to 85 percent of the world’s polio cases in 2014, has the support and resources it needs to end the epidemic.

I hope that you are as excited as I am about the opportunities ahead. Together, we can see the end of polio.

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Judith Rowland