October 24, 2014 – Polio is a potentially fatal infectious disease. One in every 200 polio virus infections leads to irreversible paralysis, and children under the age of five are most at risk. Addressing polio through immunization is one of the most cost-effective health interventions to end the preventable deaths of children. Given in several doses, immunization against polio can protect a child for life.
In 1988 the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was launched with the goal of eradicating polio worldwide. This public-private partnership is spearheaded by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and UNICEF—and Canada was the first donor country. The GPEI’s strategy aims to prevent infection by immunizing every child against polio until transmission stops and the world is polio-free.
And the strategy is working. Through concerted global polio-eradication efforts coordinated by the GPEI, we have achieved impressive results. New cases of polio have decreased by more than 99 percent since 1988. Since then, at least 2.5 billion children around the world have been immunized against polio. Today, more than 10 million people who would otherwise have been paralyzed by the polio virus are walking. India was declared polio-free in March 2014, marking an important milestone for eradication efforts.
We are close to achieving our collective vision of a polio-free world.
But polio cases in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria highlight how fragile our progress toward eradication really is. In some areas, conflict is threatening the delivery of polio vaccinations. As a global health community, we need to ensure that health workers have safe access to hard-to-reach populations. And we need to renew our political and financial commitments to sustain the results we have achieved, and eradicate polio once and for all.
That is why Canada continues to support the GPEI, the key internationally coordinated body that has set out a road map to eradicate polio by 2018, and is currently the fourth-largest contributor. Specifically, Canada supports efforts to strengthen surveillance to detect and interrupt the movement of the polio virus, improve routine immunizations by ensuring that every last child is vaccinated, and train health care workers so that they can effectively deliver polio vaccinations.
Canada is also the leading bilateral donor to polio programming in Afghanistan, where more than eight million children are vaccinated through ongoing campaigns every year. As a result of this investment, Afghanistan is making considerable progress: the number of polio cases dropped from 80 in 2011 to 14 in 2013, and so far in 2014, only 10 cases of polio have been reported. Canada is also supporting eradication efforts in Pakistan to improve the effectiveness of polio vaccination campaigns. A coordinated effort in Pakistan and Afghanistan is critical because polio can be transmitted across borders, raising the risk of reinfection in areas where polio has already been eradicated.
We are close to wiping out this crippling disease. On World Polio Day, we take a moment to celebrate our successes, but also to remind ourselves that we need to stay the course in the final push to eradicate polio.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently received the Rotary Foundation Polio Eradication Champion Award—the highest honour presented by this non-governmental organization to heads of state, health agency leaders and others who have made significant contributions to global efforts to eradicate polio. Canadians can be proud of this. They can also be proud of the role that the Rotary Foundation has played in mobilizing funds to eradicate polio and Canada’s support of global efforts to create a polio-free world.
Christian Paradis
Minister of International Development and La Francophonie
