The global fight to rid the world of polio, the largest public health programme in history, is said to be in its final stages.

Is eradication possible? Is it worth the enormous cost?

Newshour on the BBC World Service brought together public health experts with very different opinions to debate the issue.

Dr Bruce Aylward is director of the polio eradication programme of the World Health Organisation and Dr D.A. Henderson of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center led the WHO’s successful effort to eradicate smallpox.

Newshour also heard from Nigeria, one of the countries where the polio virus still thrives and from Gautam Lewis, a British pilot and a polio campaigner who suffered from polio as a young child in India. Gautam has spent the last few years assisting Rotary International in their vision for a polio free world.

Listen to the debate, courtesy of the BBC (25 mins 29 secs) / first broadcast 21 February 2009 ( we have added a slideshow to go along with the radio debate)

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The fight against polio is told through the photographs of London polio survivor and advocate Gautam Lewis, who recently returned to his birthplace of Kolkata, India, to immunize children against the disease and document his experience. The massive global undertaking of polio eradication led by Rotary and its partners is further illustrated by the images of photographer Jean-Marc Giboux, who has documented the battle against polio in its remaining strongholds of Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan throughout the past decade.

Polio is a highly infectious disease that mostly affects children under the age of five. It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. There is no cure for polio — it can only be  revented through immunization. The polio vaccine can protect a child for life.

Rotary and its spearheading partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative — the World Heath Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — have vowed to end the crippling disease forever and, with your help and support, would like to make both the launch evening and the photographic exhibition into stepping stones along that road.

The photographic exhibition is free and open to the public every day from Tuesday, 14 October, until Saturday, 18 October 2008.

Opening times: Tuesday-Friday, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.

Menier Chocolate Factory, Ground Floor Gallery, 53 Southwark Street, London SE1 1RU