Few diseases are as insidious as poliomyelitis. Spread through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids, or contaminated food and water, the polio virus overwhelms the nervous system and can cause paralysis in mere hours. There is no cure. And while any unvaccinated individual can contract the disease, most victims are children under the age of five. The decades of hard work put into all but banishing the poliovirus, therefore, ought to be a source of pride today on World Polio Day.
According to the World Health Organisation, wild poliovirus cases have decreased by more than 99 per cent since 1988. Total eradication, however, continues to slip through our fingers. The stakes remain high. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Among those paralysed, between 5 and 10 per cent die when their breathing muscles become immobilised.
Today, polio is endemic in just two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. On October 21, the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme said 39 polio cases had been reported this year. Two days later, Unicef said the number of polio cases in Afghanistan had risen sharply nationwide, with 22 confirmed cases recoded as of mid-October. As health campaigners point out, so long as a single child remains infected, children in all countries – particularly those where public health services are weak – remain at risk of contracting polio.
That fact has been painfully borne out in war-torn Gaza. Two months ago, a 10-month-old child there became paralysed in one leg after developing the first case of polio to be reported in Palestine for 25 years. A two-round emergency inoculation drive to protect more than 640,000 Gazan children was organised by the WHO, Unicef and Unrwa with $5 million in support from the UAE. As the war rages, a final round of emergency vaccinations for children trapped in the enclave’s war-torn north is suspended. This was far from the first time that the Emirates has placed itself at the forefront of international efforts to end the scourge of polio.
In 1992 – the last year a case was recorded in the UAE – the Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan joined former US president Jimmy Carter in the fight to eradicate diseases such as polio in Africa.
The UAE Pakistan Vaccination Assistance Programme has administered about 750 million doses of polio vaccine in Pakistan since 2014, protecting 102 million children.
President Sheikh Mohamed has personally committed more than $381 million to global efforts to eliminate the disease and support humanitarian organisations that organise polio eradication campaigns and vaccinate children.
It is perhaps no coincidence that a leading philanthropic foundation on preventable disease established by Sheikh Mohamed is called Reaching the Last Mile. It is recognition that eradicating an illness such as polio is not an aspirational goal – it is entirely within reach.
But to reach that last mile will require sustained commitment from donors, health campaigners and governments. With the right approach, having a World Polio Day could, eventually, be a thing of the past.
