More than 600 Indian scientists, experts sign declaration to fully fund polio eradication strategy
No place is safe until polio has been eradicated everywhere and more than 600 scientists and experts from the country signed the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s declaration that was released Tuesday at the World Health Summit in Berlin.
The declaration was signed by more than 3,000 scientists, physicians and public health experts around the world to endorse the 2022-2026 strategy which aims to overcome hurdles, strengthen health systems in affected countries and deliver a polio-free world by 2026.
Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s (GPEI), a public-private partnership, has received a confirmation of USD 2.54 billion in funding toward its 2022-2026 strategy to end polio during a pledging moment at the World Health Summit in Berlin, according to an official statement issued Tuesday.
When contacted, Dr Naveen Thacker, co-lead of the declaration and president elect of the International Pediatric Association told The Indian Express that while we are near to eradicating wild polio virus, the threat continues around the world. “Resurgence of cases in the United States and the UK are a reminder that polio is still a threat to people everywhere if we do not eradicate it worldwide,” he said.
The expert stressed that this is a critical juncture where polio has been eradicated from most countries. “Our job is not finished yet and if there is backsliding on routine immunisation, then there is a real danger and we may have polio outbreaks. This is not a time for complacency,” Dr Thacker said, urging world leaders to declare their commitment to polio eradication and ensure funding for the efforts.
Polio is a highly infectious disease that can cause irreversible paralysis and has claimed the lives of far too many over the last century. As recently as 1988, there were an estimated 3,50,000 annual paralytic wild polio cases across more than 125 countries. But heroic efforts by frontline workers, communities, local governments and global partners have reached hundreds of millions of children with polio vaccines and reduced polio cases by 99.9%. These vaccination efforts have prevented an estimated 20 million children from suffering paralysis, according to the declaration.
Now, wild poliovirus is endemic in just two countries – Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, after just six cases were recorded in 2021, 29 cases have been recorded so far this year, including a small number of new detections in southeast Africa linked to a strain originating in Pakistan, the declaration said.
Additionally, outbreaks of circulating vaccine derived polio virus, variants of the poliovirus that can emerge in places where not enough people have been immunised, 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.
Meanwhile, the funding will 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. The GPEI is led by national governments with six core partners – Rotary International, the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
