US decision to cut ties with WHO hurting polio eradication efforts

The recent decision by the U.S. to withdraw the country from the World Health Organization is already undermining global efforts to eradicate polio, according to WHO officials. “The disengagement of [the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and [the U.S. Agency for International Development] is costing us already with the loss of their technical, strategic, and functional support,” Dr. Hanan Balkhy, regional director for WHO in the Eastern Mediterranean region, told member states last Friday during an executive board meeting session on polio. When asked to elaborate, Dr. Hamid Jafari, director of polio eradication for WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean region, told Devex that the statement refers to the “curtailing of technical and strategic inputs by CDC in the overall polio eradication programme, withdrawal of CDC personnel from WHO offices, and the inability of the programme to access CDC’s global specialized poliovirus laboratory that serves as the nerve center for poliovirus testing and characterization and detection of polio outbreaks.” Efforts to eradicate polio have made significant progress over the past few decades. Today, wild poliovirus is only endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan but both saw an increase in cases in 2024 compared to 2023. Cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus cases have also continued to emerge in several countries over the past few years, including in the United States in 2022. Outbreaks were also reported in 2024 in places such as Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and the Gaza Strip, where the war between Israel and Hamas made it challenging to vaccinate children and protect them from the disease. A global partnership launched in the late 1980s, called the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, spearheads the eradication effort. It is composed of various partners, including WHO, UNICEF, Rotary International, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Gates Foundation, and the U.S. CDC. The CDC helps fund the partnership’s priority activities and workforce in polio-endemic countries as well as those at risk and affected by polio outbreaks. It also provides technical and scientific expertise to the partnership’s work, including performing genomic sequencing of polioviruses. USAID meanwhile provides financial support to poliovirus surveillance work and community engagement in polio-affected countries, according to Jafari. GPEI receives $133 million annually from both U.S. government agencies, with the funding channeled through WHO and UNICEF, the partnership’s main implementing partners. WHO receives a bulk of that funding at $100 million, he added. This collaboration however has been affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent decisions. His announcement of intention to withdraw from WHO came with the order to recall U.S. personnel working with the U.N. agency. A few days later, a memo ordered CDC staff to cut off communication with WHO. Since then, there’s been no official communication between the two parties, Devex was told. Jafari said the polio program “has taken urgent steps to divert samples for testing to other specialized labs in the Global Poliovirus Laboratory Network.” However, he said this is “more expensive and is taking longer to obtain results.” They expect to incur additional costs as they expand the capacity of these laboratories, many of which do not have staff members or the needed equipment to deal with the increased workload. This would mean more costs for the program “at a time of diminishing financial resources,” Jafari wrote. According to Balkhy, the GPEI is already facing a funding shortfall of $2.4 billion for its current plan that’s been extended to 2029. She thanked Saudi Arabia for a 2024 $500 million pledge to the polio eradication fight and called on the international community to “help us across the finish line.”