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

The 64-year-old violinist was set to 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.