News Category: Financing and donors

Australia’s Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, Deputy Opposition Leader, Julie Bishop, Young Australian of the Year, Akram Azimi, and The End of Polio Campaign Manager, Michael Sheldrick at the Global Citizen Gathering. Alicia Crawford/Global Poverty Project
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, Deputy Opposition Leader, Julie Bishop, Young Australian of the Year, Akram Azimi, and The End of Polio Campaign Manager, Michael Sheldrick at the Global Citizen Gathering.
Alicia Crawford/Global Poverty Project

15 March 2013- Both sides of politics came together in Canberra, Australia, on Tuesday 12 March to declare their support for ending polio.

The Global Citizen Gathering, co-hosted by UNICEF and the Global Poverty Project, was held on the lawns of Parliament House to catalyse support for polio eradication among Australian political leaders in the lead-up to the Global Vaccine Summit to be held in Abu Dhabi this April.

Both the Foreign Minister, Senator the Hon Bob Carr and the Deputy Opposition Leader, the Hon Julie Bishop MP, spoke of their commitment to ending this disease.

“Australia commends the initiative of Bill Gates, the UN Secretary General and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi in convening in convening a Global Vaccine Summit in April in Abu Dhabi. The Summit will include the launch of an Endgame Strategy to eradicate polio by 2018. Australia is proud to be a partner in this final push to polio eradication,” said Senator Carr.

In a statement read out at the event, Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, applauded Australia’s commitment to polio eradication. Meanwhile the Young Australian of the Year, Akram Azimi, took the opportunity to share the story of how Australian foreign aid dollars had changed his life:

“I am walking and breathing freely today because Australian tax payers contributed funds to vaccinate children – like me – in war-torn Afghanistan against polio. These Australian tax payers chose not to leave my health to blind chance—and for this, I could not be more grateful.”

Other speakers at the event included Pakistani High Commissioner Abdul Malik Abdullah, Dr Julie Hall, Polio Programme Lead at UNICEF, and Samah Hadid, the Australian Director of the Global Poverty Project.

On the same day in New Zealand, the Global Poverty Project’s The End of Polio campaign gave a presentation to Members of Parliament, Rotarians and others; highlighting the progress achieved in the battle to end this disease.

And while The End of Polio campaign was focused on Canberra and Wellington, Bill Gates, Rotary International and the UN Foundation’s Shot at Life campaign were taking on Washington DC. The group came together on 14 March for a rally on the steps of Capitol Hill before a lunch briefing was held for Congressional staff members. Discussion focused on the importance of continued US support for the worldwide campaign to eradicate polio.

With the Global Vaccine Summit and the launch of the new polio eradication strategic plan just around the corner, members of the global movement to end polio are pulling out all the stops to build support among donor governments. Without sufficient funding for the new plan, the world could miss the opportunity to end the scourge of polio once and for all.

As Dr Hall said at the Global Citizen Gathering last Tuesday, “we are, as Rotary says, this close to finishing the job. This close to creating a polio free world and this close to finding a path to the missed children – missed for polio and missed for many other essential services too.”

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Children being immunized in a school yard. WHO/R.Curtis
Children being immunized in a school yard.
WHO/R.Curtis

New York, (February 28, 2013) – In a major new commitment, business publishing magnate and New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced a $100 million donation to support polio eradication efforts through Bloomberg Philanthropies. The donation will help fund the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s six-year plan to eradicate polio.

“It’s unthinkable that polio still exists in the world when we have the tools and technology to protect children from this preventable, debilitating disease. Now is the time to invest in making polio history. Doing so will protect future generations of children and pave the way for other life-saving interventions to reach the world’s most vulnerable populations,” said Bloomberg.

Bloomberg joins key private donors to polio eradication, including the founder of CNN and the UN Foundation Ted Turner, Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote and Indian philanthropist Rajshree Birla.

The number of polio cases plunged to the lowest level ever in 2012 – less than 225 cases – and the number of countries where polio transmission has never been stopped was reduced to three – Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. India, long-regarded as the nation facing the greatest challenges to ending polio, was declared polio-free in February 2012. In response, the World Health Assembly declared ending polio a “programmatic emergency” for global public health and the Presidents of Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan are overseeing the implementation of emergency action plans in their countries. These plans have led to significant advancements in the efforts to reach hard-to-access children with the polio vaccine.

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…So when the Gates Foundation challenged Rotary International to raise US$200 million, they set to work with gusto.

Rotarians around the world are involved in many facets of polio eradication; from raising funds, to spreading the polio eradication message, to vaccinating children. Rod Curtis/WHO

Back in 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation issued Rotary International a challenge – raise US$ 100 million for polio eradication in the next three years, and the Foundation would chip in an extra US$ 100 million.

What the Gates Foundation probably did not expect was the enthusiasm with which this challenge was met. Within 12 months Rotary International’s global network of volunteers had already raised US$ 60 million.

So the Gates Foundation upped the ante; challenging Rotary to double their contribution by end-June 2012 in return for a US$ 355 million contribution from the Foundation. And wouldn’t you know it, Rotarians are already 93% of the way there – raising US$ 185 million with 10 months to spare.

For more on how Rotarians around the world are working in innovative ways to meet the $US 200 million challenge, read Rotary International’s story.

Leaders of the G7 at their heads of state summit in Italy. Ministers of Health from around the world at last month’s World Health Assembly. A broad swathe of civil society at the Rotary International annual convention in Singapore.  All these bodies have restated the importance of eradicating polio and their determination to do so. Polio eradication is classified as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern under the International Health Regulations, and polio is the only such disease.  Public health advisory bodies, including the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Subcommittee for Polio Eradication and Outbreaks, continue to foster the necessary commitments to achieve success.

But with so many other priorities, both health and non-health related, affecting the world, why is it that commitment to this particular effort remains so solid, even after all these years?  Carol Pandak, Director PolioPlus at Rotary International – the global service organization which launched the global quest to eradicate polio back in 1985 and civil society arm of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative – has some very clear views.  “Ultimately, it is on the one hand the unique opportunity that we collectively have right now  to eradicate a human disease for only the second time in history,” she explains, “with all the benefits that go along with it.  But on the other hand, the consequences that we would face if we collectively do not achieve in finishing the disease, with global resurgence of the disease.”

Pandak points out that the global effort to eradicate polio is unique, in that it managed to do something quite unprecedented in human history:  commitment by all, towards a single common goal.  “I cannot think of another effort, that has literally seen every single country, every single government, all communities, community leaders, the private sector, parents and health workers unite, all over the world, towards achieving a common goal.  Not since the eradication of smallpox, at least.  And look at the benefits the smallpox effort has brought to the world:  from half a billion deaths caused in the 20th century alone, to no infections every again since it was certified as globally eradicated in 1980.  This is what the eradication of a disease means.  All countries and all sectors of civil society all coming together, working together, achieving success together, and benefitting equally and together of the results.”