WHO chief announces plans to step up global polio eradication effort

The new head of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today announced plans to rapidly step up the global fight to eradicate polio and named a senior agency expert in SARS as his representative to spearhead the effort.

“Polio eradication is a top priority. I want to see this disease gone once and for all. We have eliminated it from almost every country in the world. Now is the time to boost our action and resolve, and wipe it out everywhere,” WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook said at a press briefing in Geneva, also announcing that his office has taken direct oversight of polio eradication activities.

“I am immediately upgrading WHO’s capacity to support India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Egypt in their efforts to immunize every child against polio,” he added. As part of the effort, the key endemic countries will conduct mass immunization campaigns from the end of August to December aimed at reaching a total of 175 million children. Success in eradicating polio depends on the success of these campaigns in India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Egypt.

David Heymann, who led WHO’s effort to contain the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome around the world, was named the Director-General’s Representative for Polio Eradication.

“Just as with SARS, polio knows no boundaries,” Mr. Heymann said. “In January, a child was paralyzed by polio in Lebanon for the first time in 10 years. That virus travelled from India. Unless we stop transmission in the remaining polio-endemic countries, polio will spread to other countries and paralyze children, potentially reversing the gains already made.” In the past 12 months, polioviruses have also spread from Nigeria to neighbouring countries that had been polio-free.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is spearheaded by WHO, Rotary International, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The poliovirus is now circulating in only seven countries, down from over 125 when the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched in 1988. The seven countries with indigenous wild poliovirus are India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Niger and Somalia.