Do Polio Eradication Efforts Overlook the 20 Million People Living with It?

Public health campaigns around the world have helped to reduce the number of people infected with polio by 99%—from 350,000 annual cases in 125 countries in 1988, to 138 cases in two endemically infected countries in 2018. However, recent disruptions in polio vaccination campaigns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have occasioned a small but significant uptick in cases—1226 in 2020. It was therefore with considerable excitement that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a public–private partnership, announced a USD $5.1 billion campaign to achieve a polio-free world by 2025.

Polio eradication efforts run the risk of overlooking the 20 million people worldwide who live with the disabling consequences of polio. In high-income countries, where polio immunization campaigns became universal in the 1950s and 1960s, most people living with a polio-related disability are now aged 60 years or older. In low-income and middle-income countries, where polio vaccination campaigns did not reach many until the 1980s or later, hundreds of thousands disabled by polio are still children and young adults.

Thus, it is imperative that the global health community's commitment to address polio must consider within its remit the needs and concerns of those permanently disabled by polio. The funding, expertise, and commitment should not stop once the last polio cases have been reported. Continued investments in implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the disability inclusion components of the Sustainable Development Goals, for example, are as integral to addressing polio as eradicating the virus itself. In the words of the authors:

"The battle against polio will not be won until the global community can ensure the needs of people who live with the disabling consequences of polio are met, and resources are made available to enable them to function fully and freely in the societies in which they live—now and in the future."

HPOD's Executive Director, Professor Michael Ashley Stein, co-authored the correspondence along with HPOD associate Nora Ellen Groce, of the University College London's International Disability Research Centre, and Lena Morgon Banks, of London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine's International Centre for Evidence in Disability.

Access the full correspondence published in the Lancet Global Health here or here.