The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) needs more funds and has pushed back by three years its target to officially wipe out all forms of the disease, officials said on Thursday.
The coalition now hopes to declare an end to both the wild virus and the vaccine-derived variant by 2027 and 2029, respectively, compared with a previous deadline of 2026 for both forms.
Wiping out the paralysis-causing viral disease has been a global health aim for decades and while mass vaccination campaigns have helped reduce cases significantly since 1988, a complete eradication of polio has proved more difficult. The first missed target was in 2000.
“It’s always as you get to the end... that you say ‘Well, this is so hard,’” said Chris Elias, chair of the polio oversight board at GPEI and head of global development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation is one of the partners in the GPEI alongside the World Health Organization.
But Elias said the progress made in recent decades showed they have both the tools and the will to finish the job.
In an interview with Reuters, Elias said the initiative still hoped to interrupt transmission of the wild form of polio next year, but would then need to wait two years to check there were no new cases before officially declaring the disease wiped out.
Wild polio is now only endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which reported 54 cases this year. The vaccine-derived strain is more spread out and in harder-to-reach geographies, Elias said, and there have been 179 cases this year.
The latter form of polio can occur when children are immunized with a vaccine containing a weakened version of the live virus. They are protected, but the weakened virus excreted by these immunized children can spread and mutate among an unvaccinated population.
The GPEI’s oversight board said it now needs $6.9 billion in total funding, compared with the $4.8 billion previously required.
Donors have committed $4.5 billion so far, but an additional $2.4 billion is required for “urgent and vital tactical shifts” in the approach, the GPEI said.
These include focusing more on local strategies and leadership, as well as countering misinformation in areas where routine immunization is a challenge.
Elias said he was sure it could be done.
“We have succeeded in interrupting polio virus transmission everywhere. We just haven’t succeeded everywhere at the same time ... so it’s a little bit like whack-a-mole.”
![]()
More time and money needed to wipe out polio, global group says
Short Url
https://arab.news/42dwr
More time and money needed to wipe out polio, global group says
- The coalition now hopes to declare an end to both the wild virus and the vaccine-derived variant by 2027 and 2029, respectively
Louvre heist probe still aims to ‘recover jewelry’, top prosecutor says
- Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery
PARIS: French investigators remain determined to find the imperial jewels stolen from the Louvre in October, a prosecutor has said.
Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery, making off with jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from the world-famous museum.
“The interrogations have not produced any new investigative elements,” top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said this week, three months after the broad-daylight heist.
But the case remains a top priority, she underlined.
“Our main objective is still to recover the jewelry,” she said.
That Sunday morning in October, thieves parked a mover’s truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels.
Two of the thieves climbed up the ladder, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass display booths containing the treasures, while the other two waited below, investigators say.
The four then fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.
But eight other items of jewelry — including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise — remain at large.
Beccuau said investigators were keeping an open mind as to where the loot might be.
“We don’t have any signals indicating that the jewelry is likely to have crossed the border,” she said, though she added: “Anything is possible.”
Detectives benefitted from contacts with “intermediaries in the art world, including internationally” as they pursued their probe.
“They have ways of receiving warning signals about networks of receivers of stolen goods, including abroad,” Beccuau said.
As for anyone coming forward to hand over the jewels, that would be considered to be “active repentance, which could be taken into consideration” later during a trial, she said.
A fifth suspect, a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of one of the men, has been charged with being an accomplice but was released under judicial supervision pending a trial.
Investigators still had no idea if someone had ordered the theft.
“We refuse to have any preconceived notions about what might have led the individuals concerned to commit this theft,” the prosecutor said.
But she said detectives and investigating magistrates were resolute.
“We haven’t said our last word. It will take as long as it takes,” she said.
Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery, making off with jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from the world-famous museum.
“The interrogations have not produced any new investigative elements,” top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said this week, three months after the broad-daylight heist.
But the case remains a top priority, she underlined.
“Our main objective is still to recover the jewelry,” she said.
That Sunday morning in October, thieves parked a mover’s truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels.
Two of the thieves climbed up the ladder, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass display booths containing the treasures, while the other two waited below, investigators say.
The four then fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.
But eight other items of jewelry — including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise — remain at large.
Beccuau said investigators were keeping an open mind as to where the loot might be.
“We don’t have any signals indicating that the jewelry is likely to have crossed the border,” she said, though she added: “Anything is possible.”
Detectives benefitted from contacts with “intermediaries in the art world, including internationally” as they pursued their probe.
“They have ways of receiving warning signals about networks of receivers of stolen goods, including abroad,” Beccuau said.
As for anyone coming forward to hand over the jewels, that would be considered to be “active repentance, which could be taken into consideration” later during a trial, she said.
A fifth suspect, a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of one of the men, has been charged with being an accomplice but was released under judicial supervision pending a trial.
Investigators still had no idea if someone had ordered the theft.
“We refuse to have any preconceived notions about what might have led the individuals concerned to commit this theft,” the prosecutor said.
But she said detectives and investigating magistrates were resolute.
“We haven’t said our last word. It will take as long as it takes,” she said.
Latest updates
© 2026 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.