PHA-Exchange> UN HEALTH AGENCY, PARTNERS LAUNCH FINAL ASSAULT ON POLIO; SEEK TOTAL ERADICATION

[Claudio]

From: "Vern Weitzel" <vern at coombs.anu.edu.au>
From: UNNews at un.org

UN HEALTH AGENCY, PARTNERS LAUNCH FINAL ASSAULT ON POLIO; SEEK TOTAL 
ERADICATION
New York, Mar  1 2007  3:00PM
Mounting a hopefully final assault on polio, the United Nations health 
agency and its partners have
pledged to raise within 12 months, and then sustain for as long as needed, 
vaccination levels in the
last four endemic countries to those that stopped the sometimes paralysing 
and fatal disease
altogether elsewhere in the world.

Governments, donors and international agencies at a meeting in Geneva 
yesterday hosted by the UN
World Health Organization
(<"http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2007/np09/en/index.html">WHO), 
agreed on the collective
responsibility to mobilize the resources needed to complete polio 
eradication, in particular by
filling a funding gap of $575 million for 2007-2008, with $60 million 
urgently needed by next month.

Indigenous wild poliovirus survives in only parts of Nigeria, India, 
Pakistan and Afghanistan, where
transmission has never been stopped. Ten other countries are currently 
fighting the tail-end of
outbreaks caused by importations of poliovirus.

The meeting outlined specific milestones in two areas where improvements 
would raise coverage and
immunity levels. The first is to ensure that vaccine reaches children by 
improving the quality of
polio vaccination campaigns, strengthening health infrastructure, addressing 
security challenges,
and by enhancing acceptance of vaccination through tailored social 
mobilization and community
engagement strategies.

The second is the funding. International donors will need to rapidly fulfil 
commitments to securing
the necessary resources. The first step is for donors to take the case for 
polio eradication back to
their capital cities and present it to major international development fora 
between March and May.
Without a rapid injection of funding, polio eradication activities will have 
to be curtailed,
threatening the global polio eradication effort.

The commitment of the four remaining polio-endemic countries remains strong 
and was re-affirmed by
the presence at the meeting of representatives from the offices of the Heads 
of Government. Together
these countries vaccinate a total of 250 million children many times each 
year.

The meeting defined specific milestones to monitor whether the collective 
capacity of all polio
eradication stakeholders is being fully harnessed to make concrete and rapid 
progress.

The meeting, convened by WHO Director-General Margaret Chan brought together 
top representation from
other spearheading partners of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, 
including Rotary
International, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
and the UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF), together with representatives from the endemic countries’ 
ministries of finance and
health, major donors, political organizations and independent technical 
experts.

The eradication effort, predicated on reaching every child multiple times 
with oral polio vaccine,
has reduced the number of polio cases worldwide by more than 99 per cent, 
vastly reducing the fear
of a disease which used to infect hundreds of thousands of people, mainly 
children, every year.

WHO had originally hoped to eradicate polio worldwide by the end of 2004, 
but in 2003 three states
in northern Nigeria suspended immunization over concerns by public figures 
about the safety of the
vaccine made in the West, including rumours that it was contaminated by the 
HIV virus or could
sterilize young girls.

By the time these states resumed immunization with a vaccine made in 
Indonesia, the disease had
already begun to spread again to several other African and Middle Eastern 
countries that had been
polio free.