Global leaders pledge to fight polio
PERTH, Australia, Oct 29, AFP
World leaders Saturday added their weight to a push to eradicate
polio, pledging millions of dollars in new funds to bring an end to the
crippling and potentially fatal disease.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who is hosting the
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, said her country
would spend Aus$50 million ($53.5 million) over four years towards the
global fight.
"While polio remains anywhere in the world it is a threat to anyone,"
she told a joint news conference with leaders from Britain, Canada and
two of the world's four polio endemic countries - Pakistan and Nigeria -
by her side.
"We are here today to demonstrate our commitment to ending the fight
against polio, that is ending polio for all time."
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his country would commit
further investments in polio surveillance and immunisations without
giving a figure, while philanthropist Bill Gates pledged $40 million in
new funding.
"We're at a crossroads," Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, said via a video message, adding that recent cases in
China highlighted the risk of polio spreading back across the globe.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said he would raise annual
spending on fighting polio from $17 million to $30 million from 2012.
Jonathan said while the disease had been reduced by 75 percent in the
African nation, it remained present in some states and had started to
make a comeback over the past year.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, whose government in January
pledged 40 million pounds ($64.5 million) to fight the disease, said the
world was in sight of eradicating the disease.
"Today for the vast majority of countries polio has been eliminated
and the harrowing images of children in iron lungs banished to the
past," he said.
"But for all this progress we haven't quite finished the job and the
truth is that nearly eradicated is just not good enough."
Cameron said the world now ran the danger of going backwards on
ending the disease which mainly affects children.
"If we fail to get rid of polio we run the risk of seeing it spread
back to countries from which it has been eradicated," he said.
Polio remains a challenge for the 54-nation Commonwealth, with three
of the four of the world's endemic countries - India, Nigeria and
Pakistan - members. Afghanistan is the fourth state in which the highly
contagious disease has not been eradicated.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said he was concerned
that polio had re-emerged in his country, which shares a long, rugged
and porous border with war-ravaged Afghanistan.
"This situation is totally unacceptable," he said, adding that
medical staff often had difficulty reaching those in need given the
difficult terrain and the problem of insurgents.
In areas where the oral vaccine was most needed, he said, there were
people who were "so fanatical they don't let the doctors into this
area".
"But we are trying our best," he added.
Gillard said it was possible the disease, which in 1954 held Perth in
its grip, preventing Britain's Queen Elizabeth II from staying onshore
during her maiden visit Down Under, could be ended for ever.
"Change is possible," she said. "This is an issue which within our
lifetime was a problem right around the world. Now we are in grasping
distance of the end of polio worldwide and that is what we are
determined to do."
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