By Anne Wafula Strike, Paralympian & polio survivor 

Eleven months after Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian was born into the chaos of the Israel-Hamas war, he became paralysed by polio, marking the first case in Gaza in 25 years. Today, children in Gaza are not only in danger of air strikes, starvation and mental anguish brought on from over a year of war, but also the crippling threat of polio, a disease I contracted at just two years old.

Amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis, where conflict has obliterated healthcare systems and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, health workers in Gaza pursued a herculean effort to vaccinate children last month.

While both sides agreed on short, daily pauses in fighting to allow safe passage for vaccinators and families, these moments of respite were just a band aid. Only hours after a vaccination campaign finished in central Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit the courtyard of one of the largest hospitals in the area.

To stop the spread of polio in Gaza, children need a second dose of the polio vaccine. Now, health workers in the territory are doing it all again – 329,384 children have already been reached in the first five days of the second round this week.

As long as this war rages on, children will continue to face the double threat of violence and preventable disease. The re-emergence of polio also serves as a sobering reminder: until polio is eradicated globally, no one is safe.

As a long-time donor to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), and the second biggest contributing government after the United States, Britain has a responsibility to continue funding the global effort to prevent an exponential rebound of polio and end this disease for good. As the new Government reviews public spending for next year, cutting back now would be an unforgivable mistake, one that puts us all at risk.

Just two years ago, polio was on our doorstep. A variant strain of the virus surfaced in London’s wastewater system, triggering an urgent public health effort to vaccinate all children under five, led by the UK Health Security Agency and executed by local GPs in London. While no one became paralysed, the same variant poliovirus strain was found in New York State, and devastatingly, paralysed an unvaccinated citizen. As long as polio exists anywhere in the world, it is just a plane ride away to our own backyard. As a polio survivor, this risk is personal—it drives me to urge leaders and parents to vaccinate every child against polio.

Though polio recently resurfaced in areas that have been free of it for years, just three decades ago, the threat was far greater—hundreds of thousands of children used to be paralysed each year globally. Since then, the GPEI, along with governments, donors, and frontline health workers, have worked to protect all children with polio vaccines and have successfully reduced cases by 99.9%.

Today, promising trends suggest polio is on its way out if we keep the momentum up. Two out of the three strains of wild poliovirus have been wiped out, and cases of the remaining wild virus strain have only been reported in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Beyond polio, the eradication effort, which operates in the world’s most challenging environments to deliver healthcare, often acts as a lifeline to basic health services for communities left behind.

In places like Afghanistan, Somalia and Nigeria, polio health workers may be the first, and sometimes only point of contact between communities and the health system, delivering services like measles vaccines, deworming medication and Vitamin A supplements. The disease surveillance system and tools designed for polio eradication have also been instrumental in responding to other public-health emergencies like the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and COVID-19 globally.

Finishing the fight to end polio is not only essential to protect the next generation of children, but also to forge a healthier, safer world for all. After years of inward-facing policies, Britain has made itself and the world less safe. The new Government has an opportunity to reverse this course and restore our leadership in global health, and supporting the last mile of polio eradication is a critical element.

I think of Abdel-Rahman and his family and my heart breaks, knowing how a single moment can change the course of a child’s life, and the strength they will all need to overcome this preventable tragedy.

As we’ve seen in Gaza, conflict and instability threaten to undo decades of hard-won gains on polio, while also subjecting an entire generation of children to the horrors of war. To provide safety from both violence and preventable disease, free-flowing aid and lasting peace is urgently needed in Gaza.

On a global level, as the UK government reviews its public spending this month, now is the time to act on global health security, not step back. I urge our new Development Minister, Anneliese Dodds, to commit the requested £100 million to the GPEI over the next two years. Actions taken now will determine whether tomorrow’s children can grow up in a safer, polio-free world.