Wed Mar 19 11:40:00 UTC 2025: ## India Celebrates 11th Anniversary of Polio-Free Certification: The Hindu Highlights Vaccine Milestones
**CHENNAI, March 19, 2025** – The Hindu newspaper today marked the 11th anniversary of India’s polio-free certification by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 27, 2014. This milestone, achieved after three years without any reported cases of wild poliovirus transmission, was highlighted alongside a series of articles examining the history and science of vaccines.
The publication featured a quiz covering key moments in vaccine development, including questions on the inventor of the first successful vaccine, the only human disease eradicated by vaccination (smallpox), and the controversial 1998 Lancet paper falsely linking the MMR vaccine to autism (authored by physician Andrew Wakefield). The role of adjuvants in enhancing vaccine efficacy was also discussed, along with the significance of the 1986 approval of the Recombivax HB vaccine, the first produced using recombinant DNA technology.
The Hindu’s diverse content also included book reviews, film news (“First Day First Show”), health advice (“Health Matters”), international affairs analysis (“The View From India”), science explainers (“Science For All”), Karnataka-focused news (“Karnataka Today”), and a daily technology digest (“Today’s Cache”).
First Piper 