Donors Pledge $4 Billion to Polio Eradication
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| The Global Vaccine Summit |
Today, at the
Global Vaccine Summit, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) presented a
comprehensive six-year plan to eradicate polio. Global leaders and individual philanthropists signaled their confidence in this new end game strategy by pledging close to three-quarters of the plan's projected US$5.5 billion cost over six years.
The new plan capitalizes on the best opportunity to eradicate polio, with the number of children paralyzed by this disease at the lowest level ever: just 223 cases in 2012 and only 22 so far this year.
Rotary members have been advocating for government support of the polio eradication program through meetings with world leaders and public awareness events to deliver financial commitments in support of the new end game strategy.
These advocacy efforts played a key role in global leaders announcing their confidence in the plan's ability to achieve a lasting polio-free world by 2018 and their pledged financial and political support for its implementation.
Bill Gates announced that his foundation would commit one-third of the total cost of the GPEI's budget over the plan's six-year implementation, for a total of $1.8 billion.
Joining Gates was a new group of individual philanthropists that announced its support for full implementation of the new plan. The total new pledges from philanthropists to the polio initiative amounted to an additional US$335 million toward the plan's six-year budget.
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