$1.9 billion pledged in fight against polio. But huge gap remains after cuts from US and other donors

By Lauren Kent, CNN

(CNN) — International leaders and philanthropists, including Bill Gates, announced $1.9 billion in funding to advance polio eradication on Monday, but a large funding gap remains after high-income countries’ reductions in foreign aid.

The funding gap for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative through 2029 now stands at $440 million, according to a statement on the initiative about the pledging event held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

The private-public partnership aims to eradicate 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 Gavi, the vaccine alliance. In October, the initiative announced it would experience a 30% budget reduction next year amid sharp declines in official development assistance from high-income countries.

“The gap that remains is largely due to tighter aid environments among traditional donors,” a spokesperson for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Ally Rogers, told CNN. “Without the full $6.9 billion needed to fully implement the GPEI’s strategy, and sustained political commitment to a polio-free world, children will be left unprotected against polio, and the eradication effort could be hindered.”

Cuts by the United States to global health and foreign aid have partially driven the shortfall, after the Trump administration halted funding for Gavi and pulled out of the WHO earlier this year. Other donor countries like the United Kingdom and Germany have also reduced funding for 2026, according to the initiative spokesperson and analysts.

The $1.9 billion in donations will advance efforts to vaccinate 370 million children against polio each year and bolster local health systems that also protect kids from other preventable diseases.

“We are on the cusp of eradicating polio and securing a historic win for humanity. But we need all countries, partners and donors to step up now to get the job done,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement on Monday.

Initiative donors include the Mohamed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity, Rotary International and Bloomberg Philanthropies, as well as the governments of Pakistan, Germany, the US, Japan and Luxembourg. The largest pledge of $1.2 billion was made by the Gates Foundation.

‘We’re 99.9% of the way there’

Poliovirus can cause infection in the central nervous system, which may lead to paralysis and death if breathing muscles become immobilized. The virus can spread rapidly in areas with poor sanitation. It used to paralyze more than 350,000 children around the world each year before global immunization efforts were launched, according to the WHO.

Now, wild poliovirus is only endemic, or consistently present, in two countries – Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, outbreaks of variant poliovirus continue to threaten 18 other countries, according to the statement from the Abu Dhabi summit.

Since the initiative was created in 1988, it estimates that billions of children have been protected through vaccination and polio cases have reduced by more than 99%.

“The fight to end polio shows what is possible when the world invests together in a shared goal. We’re 99.9 percent of the way there – but the last stretch demands the same determination that got us this far,” said Gates, chair of the Gates Foundation and co-founder of Microsoft, in a statement. “This renewed funding will help us cross the finish line and strengthen the systems that protect children from this terrible disease for good.”

Global health officials are aiming to replicate the success of eradicating smallpox, which in 1980 became the first disease to be eliminated through human efforts. But several self-imposed deadlines for eradication have been missed starting with 2000, as the campaign has been plagued by funding gaps, the emergence of new polio variants, misinformation and mismanagement.

CNN’s Alireza Hajihosseini contributed to this report.

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