Global donors have reaffirmed their commitment to eradicate polio in Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan under the auspices of Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GEPI) has donated $1.2 billion to finance efforts to end the disease.
Global health leaders; the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have commended the funding initiative to eradicate polio disease in three countries recording cases of the disease.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a public-private partnership dedicated to ending the disease, announced the pledges at the Rotary Convention in Atlanta.
The major pledges included $75 million from Canada, $61.4 million from the European Commission, $55 million from Japan, and $30 million from Sheikh Mohamed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
Others pledges were $30 million from the Dalio Foundation, $25 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies, $15 million from an anonymous donor, and $13.4 million from Australia. There were also $11.2 million from Germany, $5 million each from EasyJet and Italy while the Republic of Korea pledged $4 million.
Also, UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said that the funding commitments would enable the programme to continue to improve performance and overcome challenges to reach every child, including vaccinating children in conflict areas.
Lake said: “We are, together, truly on the verge of eradicating polio from the planet but only if we work relentlessly to reach the children we have not yet reached. “We cannot fail to make this last effort. Because if we do not now make history, we will, and should be judged harshly by history.”
On her part, Dr Margret Chan WHO Director-General while speaking on the progress so far noted that polio has been eliminated from some of the most remote and challenging areas in the world like India once considered as most difficult place in the world to stop the disease.
She said that no case has been reported in the past six years, adding that over 16 million children worldwide are walking today who would otherwise have been paralysed by this disease. According to her, polio resources in countries around the world are helping to advance other national health goals.
“The key to ending polio will be to ensure that millions of health workers some of whom work in the most challenging environments in the world are able to reach every child, everywhere in the world,” she said.
The highly contagious virus has now been eliminated in all but three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. There have been only five cases to date in 2017.
However, children remain at risk everywhere until polio is completely stopped the UN said.
