 Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization. Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), urged governments and international donors on Wednesday to make more efforts to realize the goal of polio eradication. "We have reached a critical point in our drive to eradicate polio. We are in the low season for virus transmission ... we are also at the lowest level of cash flow," Chan told a one-day meeting of government representatives, experts and committed partners. "If we don't meet this poliovirus with an immediate surge of commitment, the virus may win," she told the meeting, which was hosted by the WHO and meant to review global polio eradication strategy. Due to global anti-polio efforts, indigenous wild poliovirus now survives in only parts of four countries - Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan - where transmission has never been stopped. Ten other countries are currently fighting the tail-end of outbreaks caused by importation of poliovirus. But fully eliminating the disease, which can cause paralysis in children, has proved unexpectedly difficult. At Wednesday's meeting, delegates from the four remaining polio-endemic countries - Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan - agreed to raise the levels of vaccination coverage and child immunity in the areas with endemic polio. The meeting also outlined specific milestones in two areas where improvements would raise the coverage and immunity levels. The first is to ensure that vaccine reaches children by improving the quality of polio vaccination campaigns, strengthening health infrastructure, addressing security challenges, and by enhancing acceptance of vaccination through tailored social mobilization and community engagement strategies. Secondly, the meeting agreed that there was a collective responsibility to mobilize the resources needed to complete polio eradication, in particular by filling the funding gap of 575 million U.S. dollars for 2007-2008. 2007-03-01
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