The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced its largest financial commitment yet to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, speaks during the Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit in New York, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. The first-ever Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit brings together climate leaders to showcase transformative solutions that repair and regenerate the planet. — Bill Gates says polio came tantalizingly close to being eradicated in the spring, before new outbreaks were seeded in Africa and a man was paralyzed in New York.
“We’re very committed,” Gates, 66, said. “I can’t say forever, but giving up would mean hundreds of thousands of kids being paralyzed.” The UK government made a pledge to the polio program before lowering its aid spending to 0.5% of gross national income from 0.7% in 2021. “Some things they prioritized and some things they didn’t,” Gates said. “But this one seems pretty urgent. It is a bit ironic that now we have some poliovirus being sampled in environmental samples, not only in London, but also in New York City.”Smallpox remains the only human disease eradicated so far.
“While these viruses exist anywhere in the world, the whole world’s at risk,” said Carol Pandak, the Chicago-based director of the PolioPlus program at Rotary International, whose members launched an immunization campaign in the Philippines in 1979 that helped inspire the Global Polio Eradication Initiative nine years later. “It’s in our own interests to see this through to the end, to remove that risk for all populations.
Smallpox, in comparison, is easily identified by the characteristic red rash it causes, speeding the identification of outbreaks and the commencement of vaccination programs in response. The cowpox-based vaccine used against smallpox protected almost everyone after a single inoculation, whereas with the oral polio vaccine — used in about 150 countries as recently as 2016 — three or more doses are required to fully protect 85% of children.
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