As cases in neighboring Pakistan rise to record highs, Rotary and its partners work to keep India polio-free
Rotary announces US$ 44.7 million in grants to fight polio worldwide, including $4.9 million to keep the paralysing disease from crossing India’s borders. The funds will be used by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to support high quality immunization campaigns in India. UNICEF will receive USD 3.5 million out of the USD 4.9 million grants to India.
The funding commitment comes as India prepares to celebrate in January 2015 four years since its last case of polio. This tremendous achievement prompted WHO to declare both India and its entire Southeast Asia Region polio-free earlier this year, in March 2014. However, experts warn that India’s polio-free status is fragile, particularly as polio cases in neighboring Pakistan climb to record highs this year. Pakistan recently recorded its 200th case of polio, the highest case count in the country in more than a decade.
“Until polio is eradicated everywhere, India remains at risk,” said Rotary’s National PolioPlus Chair for India Deepak Kapur. “Indians have worked hard to rid our country of this dreaded disease. However, the hard work must continue until polio is eradicated everywhere, or we risk seeing it re-enter our borders.”
“The grant from Rotary will provide critical funds to implement communication and mobilisation activities to keep polio out of India. The UNICEF managed social mobilisation network in India has been emulated around the world as a gold standard. UNICEF remains a committed partner in the polio eradication effort and our social mobilisation network will continue to be active and harness this great momentum and leverage it for broader health initiatives for improving the lives of children,” said Louis-Georges Arsenault, UNICEF India Representative. “India’s experience of eradicating polio proves that the obstacles which stand in the way of our ambitious goals for children can be overcome”.
Polio is set to become the second human disease ever to be eliminated from the world (smallpox is the first). To date, Rotary has helped 193 countries stop the transmission of polio through the mass immunisation of children. Rotary’s new funding commitment, targets countries where children remain at risk of contracting this incurable, but totally vaccine-preventable, disease.
Approximately $18.5 million will go to the three remaining polio-endemic countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. An endemic country is one where the wild poliovirus has never been stopped. Another $9.5 million is marked for previously polio-free countries currently reporting cases “imported” from the endemic countries: Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Somalia. And $10.4 million will go to polio-free countries that remain at risk of reinfection: Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Niger, South Sudan, and Sudan.The remaining $6.3 million will go toward polio eradication research.
To date, Rotary has contributed more than $1.3 billion to fight polio. Through 2018, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will match two-to-one every dollar Rotary commits to polio eradication (up to $35 million a year). As of 2013, there were only 416 confirmed polio cases in the world, down from about 350,000 a year when the initiative launched in 1988.
EH News Bureau–Mumbai