1.) When the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) issued its first report early in April 2011: 99% of polio had been eradicated a decade previously but 1% had remained since then; Four countries had 'endemic' disease: India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan; Three countries that had previously been free of disease had 're-established transmission' for more than six months: Angola, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo; There had been 14 outbreaks in other countries since the start of 2010. 2.) In its series of meetings and reports, the IMB has challenged affected countries and those leading the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (we use the term 'the Programme' for the sum total of these people and activities) to look critically at performance and improve it. The IMB has pushed the Programme to broaden its thinking and approach to embrace more strongly the 'people factors' that are critical to this endeavour. Traditionally, the Programme's strengths have lain with technical and epidemiological disease control interventions and activities. 3.) The IMB has been pleased that the Programme has responded positively to our guidance. We have seen its leadership reflect, learn, change its emphasis, and increase its urgency. 4.) As we issue this, our sixth report: All but 0.1% of polio has been eradicated globally: there were 350,000 cases in 1988; there have been just 175 so far in 2012; Polio is more tightly confined than ever before - affecting just 94 districts in four countries so far this year; The Programme is enjoying an unprecedented level of priority and commitment, much of it stemming from the World Health Assembly's declaration of polio eradication as an emergency for global public health. 5.) The IMB was established to monitor the Programme's 2010-12 Strategic Plan. This aimed to stop global polio transmission by the end of 2012. The Programme will now clearly not achieve this goal. 6.) Despite it missing yet another deadline, the IMB judges the Programme's prospects to be more positive than ever. If this level of progress had been achieved at the start, not the end, of the 2010-12 period, transmission could have been stopped by now.