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.”