Last “indigenous” polio case

Melik Minas was barely 3 years old when he became the last person in the WHO European Region to be infected with indigenous wild poliovirus. Melik lived in the Agri province of Turkey, where he contracted polio in November 1998. The disease paralysed Melik, although he later recovered partially.

Melik had not been vaccinated against polio, either through routine vaccination or as part of the special vaccination campaigns that were frequently conducted in Turkey, and across the European Region during the late 1990s.