British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the United Kingdom would double its current contribution to polio eradication, and called on other donors to back the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Prime Minister Cameron said: “I passionately believe that we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rid the world of the evil of polio. We have the vaccines and the tools to do it. All that’s missing is real and sustained political will to see this effort through to the end. That’s why I’m announcing today that the UK is prepared to fully vaccinate an additional 45 million children against polio, through a doubling of our support to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative over the next two years. In return for that commitment, we ask other donors to do their bit, and affected countries to strengthen their routine immunisation programmes. We have come so far in eradicating polio. We are so close to delivering a polio-free world for all our children. Let’s finish the job. And let’s eradicate polio once-and-for-all.”

Bill Gates, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed an additional $102 million to support efforts to stamp out the disease. “Eliminating the last one percent of polio requires the kind of political leadership shown by the UK government and Prime Minister Cameron today,” Gates said. “Eradicating polio requires innovative thinking and political will, as well as funding from a range of donors, to support an aggressive program that will get the job done.”

The U.K. said its commitment is subject to two conditions which will apply only to the additional £20m each year:

– first, that this additional support is underpinned by increased commitment to strengthen routine immunisation. Routine, country based immunisation programmes are vital to ensuring that polio eradication can be maintained in the future. Countries need to make national health systems capacity a priority now if we expect to maintain eradication in the future.

– second, that our support has the additional effect of leveraging more effort from others in order to broaden and deepen funding through a matching fund basis.

How will the matching basis work? For every $5 pledged by others from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2012, the UK will increase its support by $1 up to a maximum of the additional £40m announced.

The UK’s challenge aims to help GPEI expand the donor base and strengthen sustainable funding options going into the future and creates an opportunity for others to get involved.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/uk-government-polio-partnership-110128.aspx