BERLIN— World leaders have thrown more weight behind the campaign to end polio by confirming $2.6b funding toward the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s (GPEI) 2022-2026 Strategy.
This timely commitment happened on Tuesday at the World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany.
The funds will bolster global efforts to eradicate polio, a disabling and life-threatening disease caused by the poliovirus.
The plan is to vaccinate as many as 370 million children annually over the next five years and continue disease surveillance across 50 countries.
“No place is safe until polio has been eradicated everywhere,” said Svenja Schulze, Germany’s federal minister for economic co-operation and development on the last day of the three-day World Health Summit in Germany’s capital.
“As long as the virus still exists somewhere in the world, it can spread – including in our own country [Germany],” she warned in a statement released by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“We now have a realistic chance to eradicate polio completely, and we want to jointly seize that chance.”
Germany is providing €35m for the cause and plans to inject €37m next year.
Currently, the wild poliovirus is endemic in two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to the WHO.
But after just six cases were recorded in 2021, 29 cases have been registered so far in 2022. These included “a small number of new detections in southeast Africa linked to a strain originating in Pakistan”.
In 2006, the WHO declared Uganda polio-free following the ‘Kick polio out of Africa’ campaign that resulted in zero indigenous polio cases.
But in August 2021, Uganda’s health ministry confirmed a polio outbreak after results from tests conducted at the Uganda Virus Research Institute confirmed a circulating cVDPV2. The virus detected was found to have genetic linkage with a cVDPV2 strain reported in Sudan.
Five months later (in January 2022), the health ministry launched a mass vaccination campaign against polio targetting children under five. It was themed ‘Keep Uganda Polio Free’.
Meanwhile, on top of the funding for GPEI announced in Berlin, a group of more than 3,000 influential scientists, physicians, and public health experts from around the world released a declaration endorsing the 2022-2026 Strategy.
They urged donors to stay committed to eradication and ensure the initiative is fully funded.
Source: Nam News Network