Can Polio be eradicated?

A long article on the CDC website discusses.

Since the Global Polio Eradication Initiative began, the number of reported WPV cases has declined from an estimated 350,000 WPV cases in 125 countries during 1988 to 66 cases in two countries with ongoing endemic transmission during 2019 (as of August 20, 2019); an estimated 18 million paralytic poliomyelitis cases have been prevented during the past 30 years.

summary:

Top Discussion The new Global Polio Eradication Initiative Polio Endgame Strategy 2019–2023 (1) contains three important pillars: eradication, integration, and containment/certification.

 ...After global eradication of all WPVs and eventual bOPV cessation, fully certified containment of all polioviruses in research and quality control laboratories, vaccine manufacturing facilities, biomedical facilities, and biological repositories is crucial.

Containment efforts include minimizing the number of facilities retaining poliovirus materials and ensuring that all poliovirus research facilities comply with containment guidelines.

Ongoing poliovirus research facilitates the development and deployment of alternative, genetically stable polioviruses that are safe to use in vaccination and that can be produced and used outside containment.

Researchers have made important progress in replacing Sabin strains for diagnostic and serologic assays (e.g., with genetically stable novel OPVs) (4) and in developing IPVs made from Sabin and safer poliovirus strains to reduce risks from the use of live WPV in IPV production. These advances will result in a requirement for fewer poliovirus containment facilities and a corresponding reduction in overall risk for poliovirus release.

lt is ironic that few western "Anti vaxers" get hysterical about polio vaccine, but the dirty little secret is that the easily given oral version would mutate into the real thing in one out of a million cases, causing half a dozen cases a year in the USA before they went back to the (killed vaccine) shot, and even starting epidemics when given in populations that lacked immunity (usually because the Muslim crazies stopped the teams giving out vaccines and you lost "herd immunity").

I am old enough to remember the epidemics of the late 1950s, and had two friends with partial leg paralysis from polio, and one patient years later with "post polio" syndrome.