On 26 September, the Polio Oversight Board (POB) – made up of the heads of Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) partners WHO, UNICEF, Rotary International and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and senior leadership of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation— met for the first time with donors such as Norway, the US, Canada, Japan and the Islamic Development Bank, and other key stakeholders such as the Nigerian and Pakistani governments and the GAVI Alliance, to review progress against the GPEI’s Polio Eradication and Endgame Strategic Plan 2013-2018, launched earlier this year.

The POB’s mandate is to provide strong, active leadership of the global polio eradication program and to maintain the highest levels of accountability and transparency among the GPEI’s core agencies.

Last September, during the UN General Assembly, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined heads of state from Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan, as well as donor government officials and donors from the public and private sectors, to commit the political leadership needed to stamp out polio forever. Earlier this year, the World Health Assembly unanimously approved a six-year Polio Eradication and Endgame Strategic Plan to achieve a polio-free world by 2018. World leaders had previously met in Abu Dhabi to pledge US$4 billion in support of the plan, more than three-quarters of its projected cost.