International leaders and philanthropists, including Bill Gates, on Monday announced $1.9 billion in funding to help eradicate polio, but large funding gaps remain due to cuts in foreign aid from high-income countries.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s funding gap by 2029 currently stands at $440 million, according to a statement from the initiative at a pledge event held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The public-private partnership aims to eliminate polio worldwide by 2029 and is led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Gates Foundation, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Vaccine Alliance Gavi. The initiative announced in October that next year’s budget would be cut by 30% amid a sharp decline in official development aid from high-income countries.
Allie Rogers, a spokesperson for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, told CNN that “the gap that remains is largely due to the tighter aid environment among traditional donors.” “Without the full $6.9 billion needed to fully implement the GPEI strategy and a sustained political commitment to a polio-free world, children will remain unprotected from polio and eradication efforts could be hampered.”
The funding shortfall is partly caused by U.S. cuts to global health and foreign aid after the Trump administration cut funding to Gabi and withdrew from the WHO earlier this year. Other donor countries, including Britain and Germany, have also cut funding for 2026, according to the initiative’s spokespeople and analysts.
The $1.9 billion gift will help strengthen local health systems that vaccinate 370 million children each year with polio and protect them from other preventable diseases.
“We are on the cusp of eradicating polio and securing a historic victory for humanity. But we need all countries, partners and donors to act now to get the job done,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement on Monday.
Donors to the initiative include the Mohammed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity, Rotary International, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the governments of Pakistan, Germany, the United States, Japan, and Luxembourg. The largest pledge of $1.2 billion was made by the Gates Foundation.
Poliovirus can cause infections in the central nervous system, and when respiratory muscles become immobile, it can lead to paralysis and death. The virus can spread quickly in areas with poor sanitation. Before global immunization efforts began, more than 350,000 children around the world were paralyzed each year, according to the WHO.
Currently, wild poliovirus is endemic or always present in only two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, the Abu Dhabi summit statement said the mutated poliovirus outbreak continues to threaten 18 other countries.
Since the initiative was founded in 1988, it is estimated that billions of children have been protected through vaccination and polio cases have been reduced by more than 99%.
“The fight to eradicate polio shows what is possible when the world works together for a common goal. We are 99.9 percent of the way there, but the final stretch will require the same determination that got us this far,” Gates, chairman of the Gates Foundation and co-founder of Microsoft, said in a statement. “This new funding will help us cross the finish line and strengthen the system that protects children from this terrible disease for good.”
Health authorities around the world are aiming to repeat the success of eradicating smallpox, which became the first disease eradicated by human effort in 1980. But the campaign has been plagued by lack of funding, the emergence of new polio variants, misinformation and mismanagement, and has missed several self-set eradication deadlines since 2000.
CNN’s Alireza Hajihosseini contributed to this report.
