By  Sola Ogundipe

NIGERIA continues to remain in the eye of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) even as the new Strategic Plan 2010-2012 for eradicating wild polio virus faces a potential 50 per cent US $1.3 funding shortfall out of a budget of US $2.6 billion over the next three years.

The financing shortfall is seen as a serious risk to the eradication of polio, which activities are already being cut back or postponed  by lack of funds.

The plan, formally launched last week in Geneva, Switzerlan, was earlier proposed at the 63rd World Health Assembly in May 2010.  Last week’s  Geneva meeting builds on gains already made in 2010  galvanizes new action on polio eradication. The WHA

Nigerian Minister of Health as well as his counterparts from  Afghanistan, Angola and Senegal, among a number of other senior health ministry officials, existing and potential funders, vaccine manufacturers and key partner organisations  attended the meeting – co-hosted by WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and the new UNICEF Executive Director Tony Lake – to discuss the implementation, monitoring, economics and financing of the new plan.

Chan said “The next three years, and especially the next 12 months, are critical to the polio eradication initiative and, by extension, the entire international public health agenda.”

The new plan builds on major lessons learnt to date, including findings from a major independent evaluation examining the remaining barriers to eradication. It introduces district- and area-specific strategies to target the ever-shrinking remaining reservoirs of poliovirus, exploits the game-changing bivalent oral polio vaccine to increase the impact of immunisations, and tackles health system weaknesses.

In  Africa, 10 of the 15 previously polio-free countries re-infected in 2009 have successfully stopped their outbreaks. In  Nigeria, case numbers have plummeted by more than 99 per cent.