Polio Eradication Efforts: Militant or Ineffective?

Follow the Polio outbreak in real time with HealthMap

Smallpox has been globally eradicated since 1980, so why is the eradication of Polio so much more difficult? The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) would be conducting a new targeted 15 country effort to vaccinate 72 million children in Africa. The new campaign follows numerous failed efforts of the past and reemerging outbreaks. Why does the African continent remain prone to Polio outbreaks that spread rapidly? Why did the organized campaign to eradicate Smallpox take only 21 years while Polio is going on almost 40 years?

Since 1796, when cowpox was used to protect humans from Smallpox, eradication efforts have taken place. It wasn’t until the WHO intensified the eradication of smallpox in 1967 that efforts were coordinated around the world. The Smallpox Eradication Program (SEP) was jointly run by the WHO, CDC, and National Ministries of Health in various countries. Doctors and epidemiologists from the US volunteered to help with the efforts. In many instances US volunteers were overbearing and controlling of their local counterparts. A report by Paul Greenough documented the use of intimidation and coercion in the final stages of the SEP. Foreign volunteers were sent to kick down doors (literally), force vaccination of those who refused, and fix the mistakes of local staff members (1995). These coercive tactics evoked resistance from local communities, but the SEP prevailed. The SEP was run in a structured, militant fashion, where individual human rights were overridden for the global public good. Similar issues with resistance have been seen in Polio eradication efforts, but responses to resistance have not been as militant. Could this be why Polio has continued to resurface?

The earliest documented case of Polio in Africa is traced back to 1580 B.C. in Egypt and still the virus continues to spread across the continent. The eradication of Polio relies heavily on National Immunization Days (NIDs), but these events are ineffective because they aren’t comprehensive vaccination efforts, positive cases are missed and some children aren’t vaccinated causing continued Polio outbreaks. Organized Polio eradication efforts began when the World Health Assembly launched the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in 1974, a program implemented through the NIDs . In 1988, the World Health Assembly said that by the year 2000 Polio would be eradicated and they launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) to make it happen. Many prominent people and organizations put their support behind the program including Rotary International and Nelson Mandela, who in 1996 launched the “Kick Polio Out of Africa” campaign which vaccinated 420 million children. In the 90s, the UN Secretary General negotiated peace treaties to vaccinate in war-torn Liberia and Sierra Leone. Most recently in 2004, 23 African countries coordinated NIDs focused on Polio vaccination.

After all these efforts, Africa remains the only continent where Polio remains alive and well in multiple countries. A series of studies completed across West Africa showed that due to misconceptions about the vaccine, lack of adequate funding and corruption at the local level, and ineffective immunization campaigns, Polio has persisted on the African continent (Melissa Leach & James Fairhead, 2007). The year 2007 marked an outbreak of 25 cases in Angola which spread to 28 cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In 2008, after an outbreak in northern Nigeria, where there have been vaccination conspiracy theories, spread to a dozen other countries, the WHO made Polio eradication their “top operational priority.”

Armed with a “more effective” version of the oral vaccine, the new GPEI organized effort across 15 countries hopes to eradicate Polio for good. However, just yesterday the New York Times wrote that the WHO reported 104 deaths and 201 cases of paralysis from Polio in the DRC. Is the renewed GPEI effort, launched Oct. 28, 2010, even working? Is eradication even a desirable goal at all, if past experience with Smallpox Eradication Program requires militancy?

Originally written for Americans for Informed Democracy (Dec. 4, 2010), where I wrote as a Global Health Analyst.