Polio eradication: why conduct research?
For most people, polio eradication conjures up images of mass immunization activities: millions of vaccinators travelling village-to-village, city-to-city, visiting every single house-hold to immunize millions of children over the course of just a few days. What few people realise, however, is that these impressive and heroic efforts are largely underpinned by an extensive programme of research, without which the eradication of polio would simply not be possible.
This programme of research - strategically guided by the independent Polio Research Committee (PRC) and coordinated by the Research and Product Development team at the World Health Organization (WHO) - has two objectives:
- to identify, develop and evaluate new tools and tailored eradication tactics to maximise the impact of eradication efforts and to more rapidly interrupt wild poliovirus transmission globally
- to broaden and deepen the knowledge base necessary for policy decisions associated with the post-eradication era, and thereby ensure that the long-term risks of polio – once wild poliovirus transmission globally has been interrupted – are minimised and appropriately managed.
As the four polio-endemic countries are intensifying their efforts to interrupt the remaining chains of wild poliovirus transmission, discussions at the next PRC meeting (scheduled for 10-11 November 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland) are expected to focus on supporting such efforts.
In particular, the group will aim to identify research priorities to help overcome the main obstacles to eradicating polio in the remaining endemic hot-spots. These include persistent inadequate service delivery of oral polio vaccine (OPV) in areas of Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan; and, suboptimal OPV efficacy in densely populated (and historically-entrenched) polio reservoirs of western Uttar Pradesh, India.
By evaluating the precise cause(s) and scale of these underlying challenges, the PRC will - through this increased understanding – be able to recommend targeted research and product development to effectively overcome them.
In line with the upcoming PRC meeting’s agenda, this issue of the Polio pipeline describes the research work being conducted to support countries’ polio eradication efforts. A future edition of the Polio pipeline will describe research being conducted to minimise and manage the long-term risks of polio in the post-eradication era.