We said it at the end of 2016: Polio, your days are numbered.
One of the three remaining countries on the planet that had cases of polio diagnosed last year announced the first massive polio vaccination drive of 2017 this week.
More than 5.6 million kids will be vaccinated during the campaign, organized by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health, in conjunction with the World Health Organization and UNICEF, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund.
Read More: Polio: Why It Hasn’t Been Fully Eradicated — Yet
Polio remains active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Massive global immunization campaigns have helped eradicate the crippling childhood disease in every other country on Earth, including India, which just celebrated six years free from polio after being considered the most polio-endemic country in the world.
This week’s polio campaign will deploy 31,000 workers across the southern and southeastern part of Afghanistan, as well as certain high-risk districts including Kabul, according to the WHO. It will run through February 3.
The campaign specifically uses polio workers who are trusted in their communities; mistrust has been a major barrier to convincing parents to vaccinate children against polio in the past.
There have also been violent attack on workers delivering the polio vaccine, particularly by terror groups.
Read More: India Celebrates 6 Years of Being Free of Polio
“Our focus is now on reaching every single child during every vaccination campaign to stop the transmission of polio,” Dr. Hemant Shukla, director of the polio programme at WHO, said in a statement.
Last year, Afghanistan had only 13 cases of polio, down from 20 in 2015. The country also increased its surveillance to look for any signs of wild polio spreading through the population, and expects even fewer cases in 2017.
Since 2011, Global Citizens have taken 1.42 million actions on global health, encouraging countries to commit some $7 billion to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, including on polio eradication. This could be the year those efforts finally see zero cases of polio.