India's last polio victim offers a global ray of hope Polio-free nation: An Indian health worker administers oral polio vaccine to a baby during a programme against the crippling disease in New Delhi. Calcutta: Rukhsar Khatun is running with her brother and sisters among the chickens and ducks in the dirt yard of her parents' bamboo hut in Shahpara village, near Calcutta. The four year-old should be laughing like the others, but she is crying. She was diagnosed with polio three years ago, when she was 15 months old. Months of illness left her with one leg slightly shorter than the other, which means high-energy games hurt her leg and often leave her in tears. It might be a sad story, but for campaigners trying to eradicate the disease, Rukhsar is a symbol of hope. She is the last person in India to contract polio, the end of the line for a disease that has been in the country for thousands of years and just three decades ago claimed 150,000 victims in a single year. The third anniversary of Rukhsar's diagnosis is also the third consecutive year that India has not seen a new case of polio, a spinal infection that can cause paralysis of limb muscles and leave limbs stunted or withered. It means the country is officially "polio-free." Many of India's polio victims are beggars with withered and twisted limbs, who limp and crawl between cars pleading with motorists at city junctions. But Rukhsar recently started school and is growing up under the watchful eye of the Rotary charity, which has played a leading role in the campaign to eradicate polio. Rukhsar's parents are glad of the attention their daughter brings, but they have mixed feelings. They are racked with guilt; she was ill when she was due to have the vaccination and missed it. A year later she become violently ill, vomiting and suffering from diarrhoea. She still has pain in her leg, every day when she plays with other children, she has pain. It's every day but it has improved," her mother, Sabojann Begam Shah, 29, said, crouched on the mud floor over a cooking pot. All of our other children were given polio drops. But Rukhsar did not have them. She was ill with diarrhoea and vomiting so she didn't have the drops. Rukhsar's father, Abdul Shah, 33, who earns 4,500 rupees (Â£45) a month embroidering sequins on sari fabrics, added: "I feel bad." Dr Hamid Jafari, the head of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at the World Health Organisation, said many had believed it impossible to stop the disease's transmission in India. He co-ordinated the work of local doctors, district magistrates and charities to immunise more than 170 million children in 2011 and continued the project over the next three years. The doctor said the Indian government's commitment was a key factor in killing off the disease and that all parties involved "came together." Now, the campaign will turn to Nigeria, where the number of cases were halved last year, Afghanistan, where infections fell from 30 in 2012 to 11 last year, and Pakistan, where polio cases increased from 58 in 2012 to 85 last year. Vaccination teams there face the threat of Taliban militants who suspect their work is a front for spying. Despite the formidable challenge, India's success in eradicating polio has shown there is nowhere it cannot be wiped out, said Dr Jafari.