What Will Become Of The Polio Network?

This article describes the importance of the global polio network and explores what might happen to the network once polio is eradicated. Experts predict that polio can be eradicated within two years and final certification and verification of the disease’s termination is possible by 2013.

According to the article, the global polio network has become an essential part of national and regional health systems, where polio medical officers have helped to reduce mortality and morbidity levels for other diseases including measles, malaria, hepatitis B, rubella, and vitamin A deficiency. Polio teams have also helped to develop guidelines for avian influenza surveillance and other emergencies. "This is not a group that just detects diseases but it also responds, does local planning and mapping, gives vaccines to children and develops response mechanisms," said Dr David Heymann, assistant director-general for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Communicable Diseases cluster of departments.

According to the article, the WHO’s polio eradication campaign is the WHO’s largest and best prepared disease immunisation and response system. The diverse polio network operates in 54 countries with 3,300 acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) surveillance and response staff along with thousands more polio communication and social mobilisation workers. The network receives an annual amount of US$100 million under the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, but health officials fear that once polio is eradicated, donors will stop funding the network, which would lead to the loss of an important component in immunisation campaigns and outbreak responses in many countries. "[O]ur fear is that as soon as the last case of polio occurs, it is going to be hard to maintain the funding to even continue the surveillance necessary to certify eradication," said Dr. Heymann.

According to Dr Bruce Aylward, the director of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at the WHO, governments should integrate as much of the polio network as possible into existing public health systems. This would help governments to develop and strengthen their own disease surveillance and response capacities.

"It would be a public health catastrophe if this entire network would be scrapped and a few years later we realized we need its health officers to treat people in areas where we previously had them," said Dr Thomas Grein, coordinator of WHO’s Alert and Response Operations team.