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March 26, 2019
Afghanistan and Pakistan must continue to fight to "get to zero," philanthropist Bill Gates said on Monday. In a telephone interview with Reuters, Gates was optimistic about the global plan to eradicate crippling viral disease, but said the conflict and power struggles in Afghanistan are holding back progress.
"The big problem, it's still with the Taliban," said Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a multi-billion dollar philanthropist, is one of the campaign's major funders polio eradication.
Poliomyelitis is a virus that spreads to underserved areas. It attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis a few hours after infection. Children under five are the most vulnerable, but vaccination helps prevent polio.
The success of the reduction in the number of cases in the world is largely due to intense national and regional immunization campaigns in infants and children.
The latest statistics from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) show that there have been 33 cases of polio in 2018 and six so far in 2019, including 16 in Pakistan and 23 in Afghanistan. These two countries, plus Nigeria, are the last countries where the disease is endemic.
The GPEI, which includes WHO, the Gates Foundation, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and others, launched a campaign to eliminate polio in 1988, while the The disease was endemic in 125 countries and paralyzed nearly 1,000 children a day worldwide. .
Since then, the number of cases has been reduced by at least 99%. But eradicating the disease – something that has never been achieved with another human disease, smallpox – turns out to be a long and arduous task.
"We have to bring Afghanistan and Pakistan back to zero," said Gates. "We need government donors to stay engaged."
Microsoft co-founder billionaire Gates said the global polio program was progressing in Pakistan and had good relations with Prime Minister Imran Khan, who put the fight against polio first.
The "only potential negative point" in the region is instability in Afghanistan, according to Gates, where Taliban leaders do not seem to have a single policy but "decide what they want and what they will not allow. not "with regard to polio vaccination.
"That's what we do not have predictability and control over," he said. "Sometimes they prevent campaigns from happening. But the ideal is when they allow home delivery (vaccine). "
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