Unwavering commitment the key to rid world of polio
▶ On World Polio Day, the UAE is taking a stance to say that complacency is not an option
The world will face hundreds of thousands of new polio cases every year in the next decade unless leaders show “unwavering commitment” to fight the disease, the World Health Organisation said.
The warning, on World Polio Day, comes as 72 new cases of polio were recorded in Pakistan this year, the highest number since 2015. The number more than doubles the 33 cases found across Pakistan and Afghanistan last year.
The UN health body said that despite the potentially fatal infectious disease now being found in only small pockets across the two countries, there is no room for complacency if polio is truly to be overcome
The UAE has been leading efforts to eliminate the disease with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, personally donating more than Dh600 million towards eradication campaigns since 2011.
Since 2014, the UAE has used its resources and expertise in Pakistan through the Emirates Polio Campaign to get the vaccine to remote areas of the country that were previously unreachable.
The work of the UAE Pakistan Assistance Programme, which launched on the orders of President Sheikh Khalifa and Sheikh Mohamed, who is also Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, helped to administer 419 million vaccines.
The campaign is being carried out in various regions of Pakistan with the support of 106,000 community health workers, including doctors and nurses, and more than 25,000 safety and security staff. They have immunised millions of children in Pakistan each month this year, state news agency Wam reported.
Political unrest, poor health infrastructure and government negligence in Pakistan and Afghanistan have slowed efforts.
“Sheikh Mohamed’s approach and humanitarian vision for the protection of the world’s children and boosting international efforts to wipe out contagious and fatal diseases are among the fundamental factors
that organisations and poor countries rely on to achieve their goals to protect people and innocent children,” said Abdullah Al Ghafli, director of the UAE Pakistan Assistance Programme.
He said it helped to form positive and strategic partnerships with organisations including Unicef, the WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In 2011, Sheikh Mohamed and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated Dh367 million to distribute vaccines to vulnerable Afghan and Pakistani children. There is no cure for polio but it can be prevented and globally eradicated by immunising every child.
Only 30 years ago, the disease paralysed more than 350,000 children a year in 125 countries.
Since then, cases have dropped 99 per cent but rising anti-vaccination sentiment and misinformation risks the disease’s return in large numbers.
Among the issues are tribal migratory patterns, the geographical isolation of affected communities and misleading claims by extremist groups like the Taliban who say the vaccination programmes are an attempt at mass sterilisation.
Nigeria was the last African country to have a polio case but has gone three years without one reported, putting it months away from being declared free of the disease.
The hope is that Afghanistan and Pakistan will soon follow suit. This year, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a programme created in 1988 with the aim of eliminating the disease by the year 2000, announced an Endgame Strategy that set a new deadline for 2023.
The strategy requires a Dh15.4 billion budget, of which Dh12bn must be raised. To help achieve this goal, pledges will be taken at the Reaching the Last Mile forum in Abu Dhabi on November 19, with the support of Sheikh Mohamed. The event will highlight the commitments of donor governments, philanthropists and private sector leaders.
“This is a reminder that polio eradication is not a foregone conclusion, the last mile is the hardest,” said Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO. “This will take a determined and unrelenting effort from all of us. Global progress to end polio would not be possible without partners like the UAE.”
Only 30 years ago, polio paralysed more than 350,000 children a year in 125 countries
Humanity has made extraordinary strides in the past few decades: we have been to the Moon, invented robots to perform menial tasks and we can connect with loved ones on the other side of the planet with the click of a mouse. While these impressive feats of technology might capture more headlines, humankind’s most life-enhancing achievements often go under the radar when they should be celebrated equally. One such feat is the fight to eradicate poliovirus.
Thirty years ago, a global public health effort spearheaded the fight to eradicate the virus. In 1988, a total of 350,000 people were inflicted with this crippling and potentially fatal disease. This year, that number has dropped by 99 per cent to only 33 new cases. People are still suffering from the effect of polio, which can lead to paralysis in one in 200 cases – a reminder that just one case of polio is too many. Not only does the disease endanger the life of the person who is infected, it also puts others at risk of contracting it. While there is no cure for those affected by polio, prevention is easy and simple. A polio vaccine has been available since the 1950s and two inoculations are enough to protect a child for life. If the international community works together, it is possible to save every child in the world from its life-threatening condition.
The disease has already been wiped out in the West for decades and there are only three countries in the world where it continues to spread: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, although the last case of polio in Nigeria was detected in 2012. But the infectious disease can easily cross borders and put a whole population at risk. This is partly why it has been so difficult to eradicate in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as the two countries share a vast porous border that has been ridden with conflict and illegal crossings for decades. Limited access to communities, especially in areas struck by violence and poverty, is a cause of the failure to inoculate all of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s children. But polio is not just a national problem, it is an issue that knows no borders. Afghans, Nigerians and Pakistanis need our support in countering this threat.
The UAE is one of the countries that heeded that call and has been at the forefront of the fight to eradicate the disease for good. Over the past five years, more than 71 million Pakistani children have been inoculated against polio, thanks to the Emirates Polio Campaign. This joint initiative between Pakistan and the UAE, launched in 2014 by President Sheikh Khalifa and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, aims to eradicate the disease. Next month Abu Dhabi will host the second Reaching the Last Mile forum, a conference that will bring together more than 250 health experts to beat polio worldwide, in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through its Gavi Vaccine Alliance.
It will require a concerted global effort to resolve a transnational problem. On World Polio Day, let us remember that this is the end goal in sight. The world cannot afford to become complacent.