A healthy sign - Telegraph On Monday, barring a most extraordinary stroke of bad luck, India will be declared polio-free. It will be three years since Ruksha Shah, a five-year-old from Bengal, became the last person in the country to catch the disease. Since 1988, when the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched, polio has been hunted down across the world, saving thousands of children from impairment or even death. Of course, it will take more effort still to eradicate the disease in its last, stubborn heartlands of Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan - not least due to the superstitious fear of vaccination in many rural areas, and the targeting of medical staff by Islamists. But thanks to the hard work of doctors and nurses - and the operation of the free market - the world has become healthier than ever, and is becoming more so. That is surely worth celebrating.