A $5.5 Billion Road Map To Banish Polio Forever
Polio isn't going easily into the dustbin of history.
The world needs to push it in, throw down the lid and then keep an eye out to make sure it doesn't escape.
That's the gist of a new plan released Thursday by the World Health Organization and other foundations at a vaccine meeting in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
It's a six-year, $5.5 billion program, and its goal is to wipe out polio for good.
The plan calls for attacking the remaining pockets of polio in the last endemic countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria — with mass immunization campaigns. It would boost polio surveillance globally and set up systems to respond rapidly in case outbreaks do occur.
At the same time, the new Polio Eradication and Endgame Strategic Plan lays out a strategy to switch to an injectable vaccine instead of the ubiquitous oral vaccine. The latter is cheap and easy, but it contains a live virus, which in very rare instances can cause polio.
The road map also looks at how to contain existing samples of the virus in laboratories and how to secure stockpiles of the vaccine in case polio somehow comes back.
Global health leaders who have been going after polio for decades believe they're finally on the verge of crushing it.
In 2011, there were 650 polio cases reported worldwide. Last year that number dropped down to 223. This year, so far there have been fewer than 20.
Chasing Down Polio