Hundreds of children in the Capital were given polio drops today as the Centre intensified its fight against the crippling disease.

In their fresh campaign, the authorities are trageting urban lower income groups and tribals in backward states.

Parents are being urged to bring their children to health centers where they will be given the drops free of cost. "I think it is a very nice thing government has started. I have two children and I have never missed any of the pulse polio doses," Ramesh Sharma, a parent of two, said.

Poliomyelitis, which once afflicted millions of children worldwide, attacks the central nervous system often causing paralysis, muscular atrophy and deformity.

The global polio Technical Consultative Group (TCG) has identified India as one of 20 countries that remained at risk of continued transmission of the disease. Interruption of polio transmission in India is crucial for the global target of a polio-free world by the year 2005.

The Pulse Polio Programme, projected as one of the biggest public health programmes in the world, began in 1995 and millions have been given the life-saving vaccine. But the past year has seen the resurgence of the disease in many pockets, particularly in rural northern Uttar Pradesh and southern Karnataka. (ANI)