The UK government’s decision to terminate its funding for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) after 2026 threatens to undermine decades of progress against a disease that can cause lifelong disability, health leaders have warned.
The move, which will see Britain end its direct contributions to the international partnership, comes at what experts describe as a critical juncture. The virus remains endemic in only two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where infection numbers are currently very low following immense effort. A recent national vaccination drive in Pakistan, for instance, succeeded in inoculating 45 million children.
‘I am one of the lucky ones’
The human cost of polio, and the imperative to eradicate it, is starkly illustrated by those who contracted the disease before vaccines were available. Gillian Russell, who caught polio in the UK in 1954 at 18 months old—the year before the vaccine was introduced—describes herself as “one of the lucky ones”.
Despite this, the disease left her with no use in her left arm and required multiple childhood surgeries on her left leg. “This dreadful disease, which mainly affects young children and has lifelong consequences, must be eliminated – and the work to achieve that must be adequately funded,” she said. Her personal experience is mirrored in the work of organisations like Rotary International, a core GPEI partner, whose members have volunteered on vaccination days in countries like India to support local health workers.
The GPEI is a public-private partnership led by national governments, with key partners including the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Rotary International. The UK’s impending withdrawal from this coalition raises questions about the stability of the initiative’s funding model as it enters its final, most complex phase.
The urgency of sustained global cooperation was recently underscored closer to home. Shortly before ministers confirmed the funding cut, the poliovirus was detected in London wastewater, a clear signal of the ever-present risk of local transmission and the importation of the virus from abroad.
The context of this detection is historical as well as contemporary. Prior to the introduction of the Salk vaccine in the UK in 1955, polio outbreaks were a major public health terror, a reality lived by individuals like Ms. Russell. The GPEI’s work, built on that foundational vaccine, has since brought the world to the brink of making polio only the second human disease ever to be eradicated, after smallpox.