expanded with the formation of the world health organization, and six regional offices that included paho. some of its efforts are focused toward the eradication of single diseases like polio, using the salk d . david bennett: with these tools, particularly the oral vaccine which is very-- relatively easy to use, and very effective, we felt we could undertake eradication of polio from the americas, embarked upon that, and then by 1991, had seen the last case of wild polio virus in peru-- the last case for the entire americas. in 1988... i think as a result of some pressure from the americas, the world health assembly agreed that the world would take on the effort to eradicate polio. we still have polio in the indian subcontinent, in parts of the middle east, and across much of central and eastern africa, so the challenge is pretty big. we are making headway; the immunization levels are going up. national immunization days-- polio days are being held around the world. it is very, very important, particularly for people in the united states and other relatively wealthy countries to understa