About the GPEI
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is a public-private partnership led by national governments with six partners – the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi, the vaccine alliance. Its goal is to eradicate polio worldwide.
Launched in 1988 after the World Health Assembly passed a resolution to eradicate polio, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, along with its partners, has helped countries to make huge progress in protecting the global population from this debilitating disease. As a result, the global incidence of polio has decreased by 99.9% since GPEI’s foundation. An estimated 16 million people today are walking who would otherwise have been paralyzed by the disease, and more than 1.5 million people are alive, whose lives would otherwise have been lost. Now the task remains to tackle polio in its last few strongholds and get rid of the final 0.1% of polio cases.
To find out more visit: www.polioeradication.org
What is the polio toolkit
The Polio toolkit is a web-based repository of social and behavior change and communication for development resources, designed to improve sharing of information and learnings between the GPEI, local partners, organizations and frontline workers working to eradicate polio. The site also provides state-of-the-art communication guidance for the introduction of novel oral polio vaccine (nOPV2), the newest tool in the battle against polio outbreaks. The site is managed by UNICEF as one of GPEI partners.
