23 October 2025
The goal of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is to complete the eradication and containment of all wild, vaccine-related and Sabin polioviruses, such that no child ever again suffers paralytic poliomyelitis.
Launched in 1988 after the World Health Assembly passed a resolution to eradicate polio, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, along with its partners, has helped countries to make huge progress in protecting the global population from this debilitating disease. As a result, global incidence of polio has decreased by 99.9% since GPEI’s foundation. An estimated 16 million people today are walking who would otherwise have been paralysed by the disease, and more than 1.5 million people are alive, whose lives would otherwise have been lost. Now the task remains to tackle polio in its last few strongholds and get rid of the final 0.1% of polio cases.
