Time to Up Efforts: Experts Pledge for Polio Surveillance at World Health Summit

GPEI started this campaign to eradicate polio after the virus was found in wastewater in countries like the US & UK.

Experts underline the need for continuing the polio immunisation programme to help maintain India’s polio-free status.

File photo.

Over 3,000 scientists and experts from 115 countries, including over 600 from India, have joined the ‘Scientific Declaration on Polio Eradication’, a campaign by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), to call for action from governments and global organisations towards eradicating polio at the World Health Summit in Berlin on Tuesday, 18 October.

"The funding will support global efforts to overcome the final hurdles to polio eradication, vaccinate 370 million children annually over the next five years, and continue disease surveillance across 50 countries."

What Is the Campaign?

GPEI started this campaign to eradicate polio after the virus was found in wastewater in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.

Dr Naveen Thacker, the president-elect of the International Pediatric Association, who also participated in the campaign, told FIT, “There is a decreased commitment from governments, donors, and all stakeholders towards fundraising and awareness. People are questioning whether it is possible to eradicate polio and whether it is worth spending so much money on it, which is actually an achievable goal.”

Is Polio a Cause for Concern?

The wild polio virus is only found in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and has been eradicated from the rest of the world. What was found in the UK and the US was the vaccine-derived virus.

But if the virus is still active in only two countries, is it a cause for concern for the rest of the world? No. Dr Thacker explains the polio virus is a big risk to the world, or can become a pandemic. But, he adds that since most of the world’s population has been vaccinated against the virus, there is a certain complacency that has set in.

There is a huge funding gap. We’ve stopped working and committing ourselves to a goal that is 100 percent achievable. We need governments to call for action from donors. And we need more voices to lend solidarity to this cause.

Dr Naveen Thacker

Even in India, Dr Thacker says that it was difficult to convince state governments that there is a need to work on this campaign and to maintain surveillance of the polio virus. He feels that governments and global organisations need to continue investing time and money, and recommitting themselves until the wild polio virus is erased from the surface of the globe.

Says Dr Thacker, “There can always be one case here and there, but if it is two whole countries, we need to up our efforts.”

How Is Polio Treated?

Since there is no cure for polio yet, vaccination is the only way out. Vaccines like the Novel Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) and the trivalent OPV are significant developments in this regard.

In 2015, when type 2 of the wild polio virus was eradicated globally, Dr Thacker explains that the trivalent OPV (which provided protection against type 1, 2, and 3 of the virus) was discarded by authorities who switched to the bivalent OPV (which provides protection against type 1 and 3 of the virus).

Dr Thacker feels that this might be the reason that the polio virus surfaced in pockets in Malawi in 2021 and in Mozambique in 2022. Or the other probable reason could be that since governments globally shifted their focus to fighting the COVID-19 virus in the last two years, vaccinations for polio took a backseat.

For now, routine immunisation is the only way out. Wherever there are pockets of low immunity or the healthcare system is not robust, the virus resurfaces and in most cases, the victims suffer from residual paralysis. The virus can spread through contamination and close contact.

How Will the Funding Be Used?

Leaders at the World Health Summit have pledged USD 2.54 billion to the GPEI's 2022-2026 strategy to end polio.

While the GPEI had demanded USD 4.8 billion, only USD 2.54 billion has been pledged by global leaders. The 2022-2026 strategy of the organisation says that the funding would be used for surveillance, vaccination, research, outbreak response, spreading awareness, educating people, and ensuring routine immunisation.

Dr Thacker says, “Whatever we invest in polio will give us dividends in other fields as well.”