The government today said that the country is all set to achieve the target of polio eradication in the near future with a sharp decline in the number of fresh cases this year. The Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said that only 40 fresh cases of Polio have been reported till the 3rd of this month. It is a decline of over 90 percent in polio cases as compared to last year. which reported 741 cases. Mr. Azad informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply that last six months have seen the lowest number of polio cases during the high transmission season of any year since efforts to eradicate Polio began in India. He also said that the number of affected districts has also come down from 56 last year to 17 this year. In 2008, 90 districts were affected. AIR correspondent says that the government has adopted two broad strategies to meet the challenges specially in the Polio endemic pockets. A multi pronged approach was adopted to address this challenge in 107 high risk blocks in Western Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. In addition to high quality polio rounds, efforts were made to improve sanitation, availability of clean water and hygienic practices. The efforts also focussed on vaccination of migratory population in both these as well as the States which host large number of migratory labour and nomadic population.