Gates Foundation pledges $1.2bn to eradicate polio

Pakistan and Afghanistan are only two countries where wild poliovirus remains endemic

The headquarters of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle. AP

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Sunday pledged to invest $1.2 billion towards wiping out polio, as health experts from around the world gathered for a summit in Berlin.

"Polio eradication is within reach but as far as we have come, the disease remains a threat," said Bill Gates, co-chair of the foundation.

The donation will be managed by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private partnership led by governments that aims to end the disease by 2026.

Polio is a highly contagious illness caused by a virus that enters the central nervous system and damages cells in the spinal cord and brain.

The disease can be fatal, and those who survive are often left paralysed or with atrophied and twisted limbs.

Polio most often affects children under the age of 5 but can hit anyone who is not vaccinated.

Since its launch in 1988, the initiative has helped to reduce polio cases by more than 99 per cent worldwide and prevented more than 20 million cases of paralysis, the foundation said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where the wild poliovirus remains endemic, although Malawi and Mozambique also detected imported wild polio cases this year.

"Despite this historic progress, interruptions in routine immunisation, vaccine misinformation, political unrest and the tragic floods in Pakistan in 2022 have underscored the urgent need to finish the job against polio," the foundation said.

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Another concern is that "countries that had previously eliminated all forms of poliovirus have recently reported new detections". They include Britain and the US, the foundation said.

Partners in the initiative include the World Health Organisation, Rotary International and the the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2019, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi also pledged $160 million to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s Polio Endgame Strategy 2019-2023, and has since donated millions more to eradicate polio once and for all.