Australia recommits to eradicating ancient disease

Photo credit: GAVI Alliance

RESULTS Australia media release

RESULTS International (Australia) applauds the commitment re-iterated by the Australian government on Sunday to eradicate polio from the entire world. 

Australia will be investing $100 million into the campaign, with the aim of eradicating polio completely by 2018. This investment not only honours an aid commitment made by the previous Labor government, but also shows the Abbott government's dedication to eradicating the disease by extending and increasing our commitment.

This investment will be hosted by the Global Polio Eradication initiative (GPEI), which is the coordinating body for all international agencies working to eliminate and eradicate polio.

Polio is a viral disease that is transmitted through contaminated food and water, and multiplies in the intestine. It can affect the central nervous system, and causes paralysis in one in every 200 infections.
Since its establishment in 1988, GPEI has successfully reduced polio cases by more than 99%, from more than 300,000 per year to just 417 cases in 2013.

The announcement by the Foreign Minister came with the opening of Rotary's 105th International Convention on Sunday. Hosted in Sydney this week, Rotary's annual convention was opened Sunday by the NSW Premier Mike Baird and Prime Minister Tony Abbott and expects to see more than 18,000 international Rotarians. 

"Eradicating polio around the world has been an Australian project," said Samantha Chivers, Global Health Campaign Manager at RESULTS Australia. 

"It was a Queensland Rotarian, Sir Clem Renouf, who lived through the eradication of smallpox and had the vision that polio could be eradicated in the same way," Samantha continued. 

"Australian aid and community support has been vital in supporting GPEI and keeping the issue high on the agenda. Now we have to up the ante, as that last 1% will be the hardest."

India, a country of over one billion people, saw its last case of polio in 2010, and was certified polio-free by the World Health Organisation in March this year. India joins the Pacific, Southeast Asian, European and American regions in being completely polio free.

Polio now remains endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, cases are beginning to re-emerge in countries including Ethiopia, Iraq, and Israel. War-torn Syria, whose health system has collapsed, was polio-free for 14 years, and was re-infected with the virus from Pakistan.

At the beginning of May, the World Health Organisation declared that the spread of polio is an international public health emergency.

Endemic polio is preventable by vaccination, with oral vaccination of three drops being the preferred method so far.

"The public health community has seen great success with the oral vaccine. However, in order to completely eradicate polio and not just prevent infection in an individual, an injectable vaccine is needed, and this complicates the logistics and increases the price substantially" Samantha said.

The GAVI Alliance is the leading partnership providing vaccines to the developing world at low prices. GAVI announced earlier this year that it will begin supporting injectable polio vaccine (IPV) to 73 of the poorest countries in the world by the end of the year.

"We are very encouraged by the commitment made yesterday," Samantha said, "Increasing vaccination is a very effective use of our aid money. Now we need to see more support made to GAVI as well, so we can completely destroy this ancient disease forever."

Immunisation in the Indo-Pacific: Is Australia up to date?

by Samantha Chivers, Global Health Campaign Manager (Maternal, Child and Neonatal Health) with RESULTS Australia

On World Immunisation Week this year, RESULTS Australia is celebrating the work of the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership that has had phenomenal success in getting underused vaccines to children in the poorest countries in the world.

It is clear GAVI is a worthwhile investment for Australia, as it aligns very strongly with Australian foreign policy priorities in several ways.

Here are five reasons why:

1.
GAVI was rated extremely highly in a 2012 Australian Government evaluation, as it “[saves] lives through cost-effective and evidence-based interventions”. Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has recently publicly praised GAVI, calling it “the kind of thinking we need”.  GAVI also strongly emphasises results-based financing, which aligns with Australia’s interest in linking aid spending to performance benchmarks.

2.
In 2011, Australia pledged $200 million to the GAVI Alliance. This funding alone vaccinated an estimated 37 million children against a range of childhood diseases, including 3.3 million children vaccinated against pneumococcal pneumonia. These vaccinations will avert over half a million future deaths.

Our investment has also supported the development of stronger health systems in over 50 countries, including Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam and the Solomon Islands. This will not only provide the foundation for successful immunisation programs, but also prioritise strong and sustainable health system financing within recipient governments.

3.
Australian partnership and leadership in the Indo-Pacific region is vital. GAVI has a large influence in the Asia-Pacific region: seventeen of the countries that have received GAVI support are also Australian aid priority countries.

It also shows the strength of Australian research: GAVI focuses on rolling out new and underused vaccines, and this has most recently included human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to protect girls and women against cervical cancer, an Australian-developed vaccine. In two years, 21 of the poorest countries in the world have been approved to introduce HPV vaccine with GAVI support, including Laos and the Solomon Islands. Through negotiating a new record low price of $4.50 per dose of HPV vaccine, GAVI hopes to reach more than 30 million girls in more than 40 countries by 2020.

4.
The GAVI Alliance works to improve global vaccine markets to ensure adequate supply of appropriate, quality vaccines at low and sustainable prices. This involves working with private pharmaceutical companies in countries such as Indonesia, to support their access to global vaccine markets, so they can make new and underused vaccines for their own regions. GAVI has had great success in creating jobs in vaccine production. In 2001, there were 5 vaccine suppliers to GAVI, 1 based in an emerging market. By mid-2013, there were 12 vaccine suppliers to GAVI, with over half now based in Africa, Asia and Latin America. One outstanding example is the rollout in late 2013 of the locally produced pentavalent vaccine in Indonesia: protecting children against five diseases in one shot, this will now be produced by the Indonesian pharmaceutical industry.

GAVI is also very conscious to introduce regional-specific vaccines. Japanese encephalitis (JE), for example, is a serious mosquito-borne viral disease that kills over 15,000 people per year. Late last year, Chinese manufacturers obtained qualifications from the World Health Organisation to begin producing JE vaccines. This vaccine will be going to eight countries in Asia at risk of JE transmission.

5.
Consistent with recent trends in Australian aid, GAVI will be investing more time and resources in strengthening health systems, especially in fragile and conflict-affected states. Considering the intense focus of the Australian military and the foreign policy department on building the governance and resilience of countries like Myanmar and Afghanistan, developing strong policies to ensure equitable access to immunisations will assist in building strong health systems.

The countries that make up the Indo-Pacific are diverse and complex, and so are their needs. Extreme poverty co-exists on the same streets as comfortable families and the megarich, more so than anywhere else on earth. RESULTS Australia works to ensure the poorest countries in the world benefit from evidence based health policy.

Vaccines decrease poverty. There it is. GAVI works with the poorest countries to get new and underused vaccines on the ground to the families that need them. GAVI is on track to immunise half a billion children by 2015, and save more than nine million lives by the end of the decade. Although Australia works with a smaller aid budget than in previous years, GAVI is an excellent investment for Australia, and for the world.

This post was originally published on the ACTION Global Health Advocacy Partnership blog