As health experts from around the world gathered for the World Health Summit in Berlin, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Sunday joined the call to help end polio, and said it will invest $1.2 billion to support efforts to wipe all forms of the disease globally.
The investment will also be used to stop outbreaks of new variants of polio which may evade existing vaccinations.
Caused by a virus that enters the central nervous system and damages cells in the spinal cord and brain, polio is a highly contagious illness that can be fatal with survivors often ending up paralyzed or with atrophied and twisted limbs.
Although it most often affects children under the age of 5, polio but can hit anyone who is not vaccinated. Back in July, the first polio case in the United States in nearly a decade was reported and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have confirmed the case in Rockland County, a suburb of New York City.
Announcing the donation, the co-chair of the foundation, Bill Gates, stressed that although the disease remains a threat, polio eradication is within reach. The investment will be managed by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a public-private partnership led by governments that aims to end the disease by 2026.
The new financial commitment was made ahead of a key pledging moment that will be co-hosted by Germany and the GPEI and will support the implementation of the GPEI’s Polio Eradication Strategy 2022-2026.
The strategy aims to end wild poliovirus in Pakistan and Afghanistan – the last two endemic countries – and stop outbreaks of new variants of the virus.
Afghanistan has so far this year registered two cases and Pakistan has reported 20 polio cases, all in the north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, while Malawi and Mozambique also detected imported wild polio cases this year.
The initiative has helped to reduce the disease cases by more than 99% worldwide since its launch in 1988, and prevented more than 20 million cases of paralysis, with Pakistan and Afghanistan being the only two countries where the wild poliovirus remains endemic.
Among the partners in the initiative are the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Rotary International.
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