WHO Director-General’s remarks at World Polio Day 2022 and beyond

Joined online by President Jennifer Jones, Holger Knaak, Marc Maloney, Ian Riseley and other senior executives,

Dear Rotarians, Dear Colleagues and Friends,

hello. We are very happy to welcome our friends from Rotary to WHO.

As an honorary Rotarian myself, and specifically as a partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, I know firsthand the immense value of your work.

Since the initiative was founded in 1988, it has seen a 99.9% drop from 350,000 per year to just 6 last year.

And it’s all thanks to Rotary and Rotarians, who played a role in pioneering the GPEI and have since demonstrated their unwavering commitment to polio eradication. So thank you for your leadership and pioneering.

Thank you for bringing us here.

Of course, eradicating disease is neither easy nor easy.

After reaching a record low number of cases last year, there has been an increase this year with 20 cases in Pakistan, 2 in Afghanistan and 6 in Mozambique.

Meanwhile, cases of vaccine-derived polio in the US and the discovery of poliovirus in sewage in the UK show that polio will remain a global threat until it is eradicated everywhere.

We still face many challenges such as misinformation, inaccessible populations and community fatigue.

Past setbacks in immunization programs that provide polio vaccines for most of the world’s children compound the challenge.

Without concerted action, you could lose the gains you have made.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s five-year strategy is designed to meet these challenges through proven solutions, adaptations and innovative tools.

At the World Health Summit in Berlin this week, donors, including Rotary, pledged US$2.6 billion to strategies to reach the goals. Special thanks to our friends from the German government for hosting us this week.

These funds support efforts to integrate polio activities into routine immunization and other critical health programmes.

They will deploy a new type 2 oral polio vaccine that will help stop outbreaks of the mutated poliovirus more persistently. It is

And they support GPEI’s commitment to empowering women at all levels of the program. Gender equality is essential to achieving eradication, as in many of the most affected communities only women are allowed access to homes and children other than their own.

Polio eradication is and will continue to be a priority for WHO.

But while we remain committed to polio eradication, as the title of today’s session suggests, we must look beyond polio.

Communities most affected by polio face many other threats to their health and lack access to services and tools to protect them.

This is especially true for many of the most important services for maternal and child care, such as routine immunizations against other vaccine-preventable diseases.

To build health systems to provide the services that these communities desperately need, instead of wiping out the enormous investments Rotary and other donors have made in polio eradication. must be used for

After all, protecting her child from polio doesn’t really help her, but she dies of measles.

At the same time, we must work with countries to address the underlying factors of the disease. The environment in which our children were born and raised, access to nutritious food, safe water and sanitation, and clean air. And I know Rotarians are working on many of these things.

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First Lady, Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Today, on my way into the building, I passed a statue commemorating smallpox, the only human disease that has ever been eradicated in history.

I like statues I would like to add it to my collection.

And, with Rotary’s support, we look forward to the day when we can unveil the statue together to commemorate the eradication of polio.

But more than that, I look forward to a future where children can only learn about polio from history books.

Thank you again for your partnership and leadership in this historic endeavor.

Finally, I would like to congratulate Madame President on her election. You said earlier that you broke the glass ceiling, but you said that in the next era this will be the norm, not the exception.

Thank you again and I wish you the best of luck.