Growing up in India, I didn’t have access to the polio vaccine and because of this, the disease crippled my legs when I was just a kid. Because of this I had to undergo a lot of surgeries and today I can’t walk without splints and crutches. My case is not the only one. When the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was established in 1988 (I was ten years old at the time), the disease paralyzed approximately 350,000 children worldwide each year.
Thirty-four years later, immunization campaigns have nearly eradicated poliomyelitis. On the other hand, unless a more extensive vaccination campaign is financed today, the risks of a resurgence of the disease are very high.
The initiative – which coordinates the efforts of frontline medical workers, communities, national authorities and international partners to help vaccinate children – has played a major role in reducing polio cases and is on the way to eradicate the disease for good. Since 1988, this initiative has immunized three billion children against poliomyelitis and more than 20 million people who would otherwise be paralyzed are able to walk.
But the fight is far from over. Pakistan and Afghanistan, the two countries where polio remains endemic, have reported only five cases of wild poliovirus in 2021 and three cases since the start of 2022. This may sound encouraging, but the presence of polio in no anywhere in the world is a threat to children everywhere else and the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated how quickly an infectious disease can spread around the globe.
This problem has become particularly acute as efforts funded by the Polio Eradication Initiative ceased during the pandemic in order to transfer resources to help countries combat Covid-19. Millions of children have not been vaccinated against poliomyelitis due to the suspension of vaccination campaigns and the interruption of routine immunization campaigns. As a result, around 2,000 two-year-olds have been paralyzed in the past by circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV2) – a variant that can emerge in underimmunized communities – in parts of Africa, Asia , and Europe.
So even though we are close to 99% polio eradication, the last bend before there are no more cases could prove difficult to negotiate. That’s why the initiative launched an ambitious $4.8 billion program in the final Global Immunization Week to help free the world from the scourge of polio by 2026.
The strategy is dedicated to vaccinating 370 million children annually against poliomyelitis for the next five years. It plans to further integrate polio immunization into general health services in communities; by working with community authorities, religious organizations and influencers to gain the trust of populations, increase the acceptance of vaccines, counter misinformation and improve monitoring and health interventions.
Investing in polio eradication yields greater benefits, if only through the strengthening of health infrastructure and the regular delivery of immunizations and other integrated services in underserved communities. The polio program has saved the world from many emerging disease threats by detecting and responding to outbreaks of measles, yellow fever and Ebola virus.
The initiative and its partners have helped develop and deploy a next-generation oral polio vaccine –
nOPV2 – to help stem vaccine-derived type-2 polio outbreaks. Most remarkably, the highly effective watch network has helped coordinate public health responses to Covid-19 in 50 countries across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It included the administration of vaccines, the detection and follow-up of cases and contacts, as well as information campaigns on the virus.
This final five-year effort to eradicate polio – at an estimated cost of less than $1 billion a year – must be fully funded and executed to completion. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that cutbacks in eradication efforts could cause a global resurgence of polio that in 10 years could cripple up to 200,000 children a year, increasing thus drastically the cost to defeat the disease and treat the survivors. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, points out that polio eradication is extremely cost effective and could produce more than $33 billion in cost savings.
The world cannot afford to give up in the fight to eliminate polio and thus squander more than three decades of progress. According to Niels Annen, Parliamentary State Secretary to Svenja Schulze, Germany’s Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, “It is really crucial that all stakeholders now commit to ensuring that the new eradication strategy can be fully implemented. We can only succeed if polio eradication becomes a common priority”.
The world has an opportunity to end polio within the next five years so that no child has to suffer like me from a disease that is totally preventable. But that won’t happen without a well-funded exit strategy.
* Minda Dentler, a 2017 Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow, is a polio survivor, global health advocate and the first female wheelchair athlete to cross the finish line at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.
Translated from English by Pierre Castegnier.
© Project Syndicate, 2022.
Growing up in India, I didn’t have access to the polio vaccine and because of this, the disease crippled my legs when I was just a kid. Because of this I had to undergo a lot of surgeries and today I can’t walk without splints and crutches. My case is not the only one. When the Global Initiative for…