Despite all the scientific advances of the past 100 years, eradicating a cruel and debilitating diseases such as polio remains challenging. Yet, for all its difficulty, erasing an entire illness from the story of humanity is an achievement that has been met before.
In 1967, the World Health Organisation announced a final push to end smallpox – a sickness that claimed the lives of millions down the centuries. Ten years later, the last natural case of the virus was recorded in Somalia. In 1980, the WHO was able to officially announce that the disease had been eradicated.
The lesson learnt from this success story was that a determined and well-funded campaign of vaccination, education and global co-operation could consign to the history books an illness that had stalked human societies for centuries. It is in this spirit that a global pledge unveiled in Abu Dhabi yesterday will direct $1.9 billion in new funding towards banishing polio and other preventable diseases forever.
The pledging event at Abu Dhabi Finance Week was hosted by the Mohamed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity in partnership with Global Polio Eradication Initiative. It is a significant moment of mobilisation in which leading philanthropic organisations such as the Gates Foundation join forces with several influential national governments, including those of the US, Germany and Japan.
But there is more to this announcement than just finance. Yes, sustained funding is indispensable to end diseases such as polio but hands-on experience in running smart operational and strategic campaigns is vital to ensure that such resources deliver tangible results. In this sense, the UAE’s decades-long role in pushing back polio in countries such as Pakistan – where it has distributed more than 850 million vaccine doses since 2014 – makes it an apposite place to host this positive moment of international co-operation. It has also supported efforts to end malaria, guinea worm and other diseases for decades.
Yesterday’s announcement is also a timely one. Although hard work has seen polio worldwide retreat in recent years, it is a persistent illness and one that often goes hand in hand with conflict and poverty. In war-torn Sudan, Unicef reports that more than 460 suspected polio cases have been reported this year alone. In Gaza, the WHO says presence of the virus still poses a risk to children with low or no immunity. It is clear that although most of the work has been done, the job must be finished.
That is why an important point of yesterday’s announcement was how this new funding will be aimed not only at polio eradication but at “strengthening health systems to protect children from other preventable diseases”. In this way the focus on polio is accompanied by a determination to improve healthcare outcomes overall.
This is an ambitious goal but as philanthropist and tech pioneer Bill Gates told The National in Abu Dhabi this week: “It'd be wonderful if 30 years from now, people said ‘malaria? What was that? Polio? What was that?’” With hard work, innovations and financing, entirely possible that the poliovirus goes that same way as smallpox, and the building of coalitions and sticking to commitments such as that seen in Abu Dhabi yesterday brings the realisation of that ambition one step closer.
