World Polio Day 2022

WHO Director-General's remarks at the World Polio Day 2022 and Beyond event  - 21 October 2022

President Jennifer Jones, Holger Knaack, Mark Maloney, Ian Riseley and other senior leaders joining us online,  Rotarians, dear colleagues and friends,
 
Good afternoon. It’s a real pleasure to welcome our friends from Rotary to WHO. 
As an honorary Rotarian myself, I know first-hand the enormous value of your work, especially as a partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. 
 
Since the initiative was established in 1988, we have reduced cases by 99.9%, from 350,000 a year to just 6 last year. 
 
And that is thanks to Rotary and Rotarians, who played a pathfinding role in establishing the GPEI, and have shown unwavering commitment to polio eradication ever since. So thank you for your leadership, and for being pathfinders. 
 
Thank you for everything you done in bringing us this far.
 
Of course, eradicating a disease is not simple or straightforward. 
 
Despite cases reaching a record low last year, we have seen an increase this year, with 20 cases in Pakistan, two in Afghanistan and six in Mozambique. 
 
Meanwhile, a case of vaccine-derived polio in the United States, and the discovery of poliovirus in sewage in the United Kingdom, show that polio will remain a global threat until is eradicated everywhere.
 
We still face many challenges, including misinformation, hard-to-access populations, and community fatigue. 
 
 
 
Historic backsliding of immunization programs, which deliver polio vaccine to most of the world’s children, has added to the challenges.  
 
Without concerted action, we could lose the gains we have made. 
 
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s five-year strategy is designed to overcome these challenges with proven solutions, adaptation and innovative tools. 
 
At the World Health Summit in Berlin this week, donors including Rotary committed US$2.6 billion to fund the strategy to help get us to the finish line. A special thanks to our friends in the Government of Germany for hosting us this week. 
 
These funds will support efforts to integrate polio activities in routine immunization and other essential health programmes in affected countries. 
 
They will help us to roll out type 2 novel oral polio vaccine, to help stop variant poliovirus outbreaks more sustainably. This effort is well on the way, with more than 500 million doses already administered. 
And they will support the GPEI's commitment to empowering women at all levels of the programme. Gender equality is critical to achieving eradication, because in many of the most affected-communities, only women are allowed access to homes and children other than their own. 
 
Polio eradication is and will remain a priority for WHO. 
 
But even as we continue to focus on eradicating polio, we must look – as the title of today’s session says – beyond polio. 
 
The communities that are most affected by polio face many other threats to health, and lack access to the services and tools to protect them. 
 
That’s particularly the case for many of the most essential services for maternal and child care, including routine immunization against other vaccine-preventable diseases. 
 
We must make sure that the significant investments that Rotary and other donors have made in polio eradication do not die with polio, but are used to build the health systems to deliver the services that these communities so badly need.
 
After all, we haven’t truly helped a child if we protect her from polio but she dies from measles. 
 
At the same time, we must work with countries to address the underlying drivers of disease: the conditions in which children are born and raised, their access to nutritious food, safe water and sanitation and clean air. And I know Rotarians work on many of these things. 
Madam President, dear friends and colleagues, 
 
On your way into the building today, you passed a statue commemorating the only human disease in history to have been eradicated: smallpox. 
 
I like statues. I want to add to our collection. 
 
And with Rotary’s support, I look forward to the day when we together unveil the statue commemorating the end of polio. 
 
But even more, I look forward to a future when the only thing children ever learn about polio is in history books.         
   
Thank you once again for your partnership and leadership in this historic endeavour. 
Before I close, I would like to congratulate Madam President for her election. I said earlier that you broke the glass ceiling, and you said that the next one is going to make this the norm rather than the exception. 
 
Thank you once again, and I wish you all the best.
 
 
 
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