Global campaign to eradicate polio to begin this weekend

This weekend saw the start of a mass immunisation campaign across 150 countries that organisers hope will finally eradicate polio. The campaign, which led by the World Heath Organisation and supported by the Gates Foundation, Rotary International, Unicef and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, involves switching from the trivalent vaccine to the bivalent one. Since 1988, the number of polio cases has been reduced by over 99% with only Pakistan and Afghanistan seeing new cases. The new initiative hopes to end transmission of the disease within a year and to see full, global eradication by the end of the decade. If the campaign is successful, polio will be the second disease ever to be eradicated, the first being smallpox which was halted in 1980.

This weekend marks the start of a global effort that health officials are hoping will be the final push to eradicate polio.

The process involves 150 countries that have to switch vaccines, which is complicated and expensive.

Doctor Steve Cohi from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention joined NewsHour’s Alison Stewart to discuss.

“We’re on the verge of completely finishing the job of eradicating polio,” he said.

The countries are expected to switch from the trivalent vaccine, first developed in 1961, to the bivalent one, which contains only the type 1 and 3 polio viruses, over the next two weeks.

The campaign is led by the World Health Organization along with the CDC, UNICEF, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rotary International.

Attempts for polio eradication began in 1988, when there were 355,000 cases per year in 125 countries. The disease has since been reduced by more than 99 percent and new cases are only found in two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

If this final push is successful, it will be the second disease to be eradicated since smallpox was quashed in 1980, according to Reuters.