The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) recently granted $90 million in funds to help Pakistan implement the latest step of its polio elimination program through 2018.
This decision was made by the IDB’s board of executive directors during a meeting at their headquarters in Jeddah. At the meeting, they evaluated the program’s status and chose to donate the finances.
The IDB previously promised $227 million so that Pakistan could implement various disease elimination programs until 2015. In the past year, approximately 80 percent of the world’s wild poliovirus cases were located in Pakistan. A report from the World Health Organization showed serious vaccination gaps inside South Waziristan, Peshawar, Khyber Agency, northern Sindh, Karachi, and regions in Balochistan.
Currently, only Pakistan and Afghanistan have endemic statuses for wild poliovirus as the world is at its lowest transmission rate for the disease in history.
For Pakistan and Afghanistan to eliminate polio, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative requires that health officials step up their efforts to stop the virus from transmitting from person to person. The initiative requires nations to use the new bivalent oral polio vaccine to protect people from contracting the disease.
