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Data

Reported paralytic polio cases per million

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Global HealthEradication of Diseases

About this data

Reported paralytic polio cases per million
The sum of wild poliovirus cases and circulating vaccine derived poliovirus cases per million people.
Source
World Health Organization (2019); World Health Organization (2024); Population based on various sources (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 8, 2024
Next expected update
May 2025
Date range
1980–2023
Unit
cases per million

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Polio by Our World in Data

Polio

Saloni Dattani, Fiona Spooner, Sophie Ochmann, and Max Roser

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The World Health Organization (WHO) provides a historical dataset on polio cases, but it is no longer available directly from the WHO website. Instead the web archived version can be downloaded here and it can be accessed by opening in 'Read Only' mode.

Retrieved on
April 9, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Health Organization - Historical Polio Dataset (2019).
Retrieved on
April 8, 2024
Retrieved from
https://extranet.who.int/polis/public/CaseCount.aspx
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Health Organization - Polio cases (2024).

Our World in Data builds and maintains a long-run dataset on population by country, region, and for the world, based on various sources.

You can find more information on these sources and how our time series is constructed on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

Retrieved on
March 31, 2023
Retrieved from
https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The long-run data on population is based on various sources, described on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Reported paralytic polio cases per million”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2016) - “Global Health”. Data adapted from World Health Organization, Various sources. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/reported-paralytic-polio-cases-per-1-million-people [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

World Health Organization (2019); World Health Organization (2024); Population based on various sources (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

World Health Organization (2019); World Health Organization (2024); Population based on various sources (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Reported paralytic polio cases per million” [dataset]. World Health Organization, “WHO Historical Polio Dataset”; World Health Organization, “Polio Cases and Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) Surveillance”; Various sources, “Population” [original data]. Retrieved April 19, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/reported-paralytic-polio-cases-per-1-million-people