Global Polio Eradication Initiative

A public-private partnership launched in 1988 by the World Health Assembly to eradicate all forms of poliovirus worldwide, led by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, and later joined by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi. It combines mass oral and inactivated polio vaccination campaigns, disease surveillance, and rapid outbreak response. Confirmed wild poliovirus cases fell by more than 99 percent from an estimated 350,000 across 125 countries in 1988 to a small number of cases in the mid-2020s. Wild poliovirus type 2 was certified eradicated in 2015 and type 3 in 2019; type 1 remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus outbreaks have become the initiative's main remaining challenge.