BMJ  2003;327:466 (30 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7413.466-b

News

WHO relaunches polio campaign

Geneva

The World Health Organization has relaunched a 15 year old campaign to eradicate poliomyelitis after missing its original goal of 2000 because of armed conflicts, insufficient funding, and lack of government commitment in some regions.

The Geneva based agency said that if donors provide $210m (£133m; €192m) in addition to some $3bn already invested in the programme, polio, which mainly affects the under 5s, could be stamped out globally by 2005.

The plan would be to vaccinate up to 175 million children by the end of the year in the seven countries where the virus is still widely present—Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Niger.

Mass immunisations would also be conducted in neighbouring regions and in countries with poor vaccination coverage that are vulnerable to future outbreaks. According to WHO, in the past 12 months polio viruses have spread from Nigeria to Ghana and Burkino Faso, which had until then been free of polio

Dr Jong-Wook Lee, WHO's new director general, has made reviving the Global Polio Eradication Initiative a priority and has appointed the infectious diseases specialist David Heymann as his representative on polio eradication after Dr Heymann's success heading a team that helped to stop the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) earlier this year.

See the profile of Dr Lee (p 468).

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