Prioritizing polio.

www.vi-vi.org We are only US$945 million short of successfully eradicating poliomyelitis: here, a case for why polio eradication should be made a priority worldwide is made – a proposal that is both economically viable and important for health care initiatives in the future. With only 128 cases reported in 2012 (by 6 September 2012) compared with 356 in 2011, we have come closer than ever before to successfully eradicating polio myelitis [101]. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which has worked on the worldwide eradication of polio, is, however, US$945 million (€724 million) short of the funds necessary to fully implement the campaign through 2013 [101]. The funding shortage has already forced essential vaccination activities in 24 high-risk countries to be scaled back or even to be cancelled, putting millions of children at risk [1,101]. It is crucial that public as well as private institutions make it a priority to sustain the current eradication effort so that polio can be eradicated in the only three remaining countries where the disease has been endemic, that is, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan, and so that it does not recur in neighboring countries such as India. An important study estimated in 2011 that eradicating polio would provide net benefits of $40–50 billion (€30–€38 billion) if the transmission of wild polio viruses were interrupted by 2015 [2]. 85% of these savings would benefit low-income countries [2].