24 October 2023

To have fun this 12 months’s World Polio Day, supporters from over 30 international locations, throughout each area of the world, joined the Make Polio History marketing campaign to inform world companions, donors, and polio-affected nation governments that eradication is feasible and urgently wanted now. 

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has the data and instruments to finish polio for good, however we can’t do it alone. Throughout the marketing campaign, polio champions all over the world constructed an extended listing of among the best wins for humanity—from the creation of the primary vaccine to the harnessing of electrical energy—and shared why polio eradication can and should be added to this listing.  

Well-known figures like Bill Nye, Adina Porter, Prue Leith and Itzhak Perlman voiced their assist for a more healthy future for youngsters all over the place. Health staff in Afghanistan and Cameroon joined in as nicely, together with Fiocruz President Mario Moreira, Dr. Naveen Thacker of the International Pediatric Association, GPEI Gender Champion Minister Andrew Mitchell, and different medical doctors and researchers from India, Brazil and the United Kingdom.  

We know that eradicating polio isn’t straightforward, however making historical past by no means is. The polio eradication effort—from world companions to nation governments to native frontline well being staff—has an extended historical past of innovating and adapting within the face of adversity. 

GPEI companions know this nicely, from WHO management within the Eastern Mediterranean and African Regional Offices to UNICEF groups in Sudan and Ethiopia, who additionally participated within the marketing campaign. Rotary International has been there for the reason that starting, as CEO John Hewko was proud to share, and can proceed to be till the top. And lastly, members of the GPEI’s Polio Oversight Board acknowledged the worldwide assist proven all through the marketing campaign, and dedicated their efforts to delivering a polio-free world. 

Today, there are confirmed methods and new instruments to ship vaccines within the highest-risk areas for polio, that are additionally among the world’s most difficult and hard-to-reach settings. Promising tendencies in polio-affected international locations which have been seen elsewhere now polio-free counsel that right now, the virus is really on its final leg. With continued consideration and assist from donors, companions and affected nation governments, polio eradication is inside attain. 

It will take all of us, however collectively, we could make historical past once more and finish polio for good. 

Visit the Make Polio History website to listen to extra views from polio champions from all over the world, and to lend your voice to the trouble.