Global leaders commit $2.6 billion to end polio | Tellwell Newspaper
Tellwell Newspaper, Abuja – Nigeria:
Global leaders comprising of governments and donors on Tuesday pledged US$ 2.6 billion in funding toward stamping out polio from the face of the earth following it’s resurgence, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement obtained by Tellwell Newspaper.
The financial pledge was declared at the unveiling of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s (GPEI) 2022-2026 at ongoing the World Health Summit in Berlin.
The GPEI is a public-private partnership led by national governments with six core partners – Rotary International, WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
More than 3,000 scientists and health experts from 115 countries attending the summit urge the world to fully fund polio eradication strategy following resurgence of the crippling disease, the statement said.
According to the WHO the funding would support global efforts to overcome the final hurdles to polio eradication, vaccinate 370 million children annually over the next five years and continue disease surveillance across 50 countries.
Although wild poliovirus is endemic in just two countries – Pakistan and Afghanistan, 29 new cases have so far been recorded this year, including a small number of new detections in southeast Africa linked to a strain originating in Pakistan, in contrast to only six cases recorded in 2021.
Outbreaks of other variants of the virus that can emerge in places where not enough people have been immunized continue to spread across parts of Africa, Asia and Europe, with new outbreaks detected in the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom in recent months.
“The new detections of polio this year in previously polio-free countries are a stark reminder that if we do not deliver our goal of ending polio everywhere, it may resurge globally,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General at the summit.
“We must remember the significant challenges we have overcome to get this far against polio, stay the course and finish the job once and for all,” Ghebreyesus stressed.
The $2.6 billion contribution is part of the $4.8 billion needed to fully implement the GPEI Strategy, which if fully funded and eradication achieved, would help in saving 33.1 billion in health costs, compared to the price of controlling outbreaks.
The continued support for GPEI would enable it to deliver additional health services and immunizations alongside polio vaccines to underserved communities, according to the WHO.
“No place is safe until polio has been eradicated everywhere,” said Svenja Schulze, German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development at the summit.
“As long as the virus still exists somewhere in the world, it can spread – including in our own country. We now have a realistic chance to eradicate polio completely, and we want to jointly seize that chance,” Schulze said.
