Itzhak Perlman is playing the violin to help eradicate polio from the planet.

The 64-year-old violinist is performing Wednesday night with the New York Philharmonic in a special concert at Lincoln Center. The sponsors hope to raise money to fight the disease, which can cause paralysis or death.

Perlman was afflicted with polio when he was a 4-year-old boy in Israel. That was a decade before the development of vaccines that eventually limited the number of cases to about 2,000, according to World Health Organization figures.

Perlman says it's time "to finish the job. ... There's just no excuse."