Recommitting to Eradicating Polio

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of children have missed routine vaccinations, including for polio, leading to the largest decline in childhood vaccinations in 30 years and increasing the risk for disease outbreaks. Today, World Polio Day offers an important moment for the global community to recommit to our efforts to ensure that future generations will be free from poliovirus and its incurable paralytic effects.

Eradicating polio is dependent upon ending transmission of poliovirus, and effectively addressing the increasing number of vaccine-derived paralytic polio cases. In populations with low vaccine coverage rates, polio vaccine strains can mutate and cause disease, including paralysis. The most at-risk populations are those that are hard to access and often have beliefs that conflict with vaccination. However, if enough people in a community are immunized against polio, the virus will be deprived of susceptible hosts and will die out. Redoubling efforts to maintain high levels of vaccination coverage to stop transmission and prevent outbreaks from occurring is critical.

Central to achieving this goal and eradicating polio for good are partnerships. As recent outbreaks of polio in Africa, Asia, Europe and now in the United States have reminded us, we cannot hope to eradicate polio without global cooperation. Polio anywhere is a threat everywhere.

Just last week, at the World Health Summit in Berlin, Mike Bloomberg committed an additional $50 million to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), bringing Bloomberg Philanthropies’ contribution to $225 million since 2013. This commitment added to the governments and partners who also stepped forward to demonstrate their collective resolve through a total of $2.6 billion in pledges to support GPEI’s 2022-2026 Strategy.

GPEI’s Polio Eradication Strategy 2022-2026 aims to generate political will around polio eradication, increase vaccine acceptance, expedite progress, improve frontline success, and enhance detection and response. Since 1988, GPEI has made notable progress toward polio eradication, and since its inception, polio cases have decreased by over 99%. ?While these eradication strategies have proven successful in the past, total elimination will require continued government commitment and accountability of proven interventions. With reliable and predictable funding, the next five years can be transformational.

There is no time to wait. Together, with an all-of-society approach that mobilizes international, national and local actors, we can end polio forever.