Recently in London, UK parliamentarians, athletes, influencers, and advocates gathered together for a run to mark the closing of the Team End Polio “Rise Together” Strava Challenge — a powerful show of solidarity in the fight against one of the world’s oldest and most preventable diseases.
Launched by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), the challenge on Strava invited people across the UK and anywhere in the world to get moving for a polio-free future. More than 86,000 participants logged over 120 million minutes of walking, cycling, and running to raise awareness (smashing its original goal of 40 million minutes).
While a strong sign of support, awareness alone isn’t enough. We need countries to invest in the fight to end polio to finish it off for good — and the political will to make it happen. The UK has historically played a vital role in this fight, leading the charge as one of the strongest proponents of a world without polio. But with the disease still endemic in two countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan) and reappearing in places once declared officially polio-free, public support is needed now more than ever, with continued UK leadership essential to help finish the job.
Let’s break down how the UK has been a key player in the fight to eradicate polio to date, and why the world can’t afford to stumble at the finish line now.
A Preventable Tragedy
Poliomyelitis is a highly infectious virus that attacks the nervous systems and spreads primarily through contaminated water and food, mainly affecting children under five. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis; sometimes this results in losing the ability to walk, and in severe cases, the very muscles needed to breathe. There is no known cure — the best tool we have to fight this ancient disease is prevention through immunization.
The good news? Effective vaccines developed in the 1950s and 1960s, including the oral polio vaccine (OPV) and inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), have turned polio into a thing of the past in most countries. Widespread, robust immunization campaigns have effectively eliminated the disease much of the world, with the UK declaring itself polio-free in the 1980s.
But in many countries across the Global South, limited healthcare infrastructure, conflict, and widespread public misinformation impede progress. That’s why, in 1988, the international community launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a public-private partnership led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Gates Foundation, Rotary International, and others, with one goal: to wipe out polio everywhere, for good.
And these efforts have paid off. Global cases have plummeted by 99.9%. Thanks to vaccines, over 20 million people are walking today who might otherwise have been paralyzed for life. It’s a truly astounding feat when you consider that just a few short decades ago in 1988, 350,000 cases were recorded across 125 countries. The fact that so many can live without fear of this disease is a testament to the power of coordinated global health campaigns done right.
The UK’s Historic Role
British support has been a powerful catalyst for this progress. Between 1995 and 2021, the UK contributed more than £1.7 billion to GPEI, making it one of the initiative’s top government donors. Just a few years ago in 2011, the UK decided to double its funding to GPEI by giving £40 million annually to the initiative. Andrew Mitchell, then-International Development Secretary, noted that, “Britain is at the forefront of the fight against polio,” funding 1.2 billion doses over the prior two years. Then in 2019, the UK doubled down once again and pledged up to £400 million to help vaccinate more than 400 million children over a four-year period.
This aid has helped vaccinate hundreds of millions of children, train millions of health workers, and helped GPEI reach even the most remote, hard-to-reach communities, with substantial ripple effects. When the WHO declared Africa free of wild polio in 2020 — a strain of the virus that naturally occurs in the environment — it was a milestone made possible with UK support. And in fragile settings like Somalia and Syria, UK-backed polio programs have been able to deliver other life-saving health services like measles vaccines, deworming tablets, and vitamin A supplements by community health workers trusted within communities, strengthening public health across the board.
A Dangerous Setback: Cuts to UK Aid
But in 2021, momentum stalled. In a series of cuts to its overseas aid budget during the financial crunch immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government slashed its polio funding by a whopping 95%, turning over just £5 million of the £100 million promised in one year.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. A year later in 2022, traces of poliovirus were found in London, the first detected in nearly 40 years. A routine wastewater surveillance program spotted the virus, which revealed signs of person-to-person transmission. This triggered a rapid public health response, including a booster vaccination campaign for children under five who may not have yet been fully vaccinated. The strain, believed to have originally started in Nigeria, was discovered in other major cities throughout Europe and even appeared across the Atlantic Ocean, causing paralysis in an unvaccinated adult in New York state.
It was a situation that made a horrifying reality clear: As long as polio exists anywhere, it can return everywhere. A single case in one country can spark outbreaks in others, creating a public health crisis that’s difficult to contain. Stamping out every last case globally is the only way to ensure its total eradication.
The Last Mile Is the Toughest
Global polio cases may have plummeted — but the final stretch is proving frustratingly difficult to finish. Today, wild poliovirus exists only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where rampant misinformation, political instability, and restricted access to communities have slowed progress. But what’s also chilling is that what’s known as vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV), a polio variant that develops from weakened virus strains that can spread across communities with low vaccination rates, has risen in recent years, with 190 cases detected last year in 2024 in places such as Gaza, Yemen, and Indonesia.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic also disrupted routine immunization campaigns, creating immunity gaps that global health practitioners and specialists are still struggling to close today. The evidence is building: If we don’t finish the job now, polio could come roaring back, impacting 200,000 people directly per year within the next ten years. And all the decades worth of progress — and billions spent in global investment — could be wasted.
The UK remains GPEI’s second-largest government donor. Now, it’s imperative that the UK step up once again so the entire world can cross the finish line. Recommitting to its original pledge and pushing for total eradication are essential to preserving the gains made so far. Doing so will help keep the whole world safe because the tools built to fight polio — disease surveillance, healthcare training, supply chains — are the same ones that help fight measles, yellow fever, and emerging global health threats (including pandemics like COVID-19).
The Final Stretch
We know that polio can be a thing of the past. The world achieved a similar milestone when smallpox was eradicated in 1980, and polio could become the second disease wiped off the face of the Earth. Two of three strains of wild poliovirus have been eliminated, and we have a narrow window of opportunity to do the same with the last.
As Team Polio’s “Rise Together” challenge proved, the UK public has shown where it stands, and citizens everywhere support a polio-free world. It’s time for the UK government to match that energy with a new, ambitious and robust pledge to GPEI.
Losing momentum as we near the final hurdle in this race is short-sighted and dangerous. Polio is still a global threat — but it doesn’t have to be. We must remember that it’s an active choice whether governments contribute to a world where no one suffers from this entirely preventable disease. With continued UK leadership, GPEI can finally live up to its name and eradicate polio for good.
