Sustaining a Polio-free World: charting the course from strategy to action

Countries: World, Canada, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Germany, Nigeria, Norway Source: Global Polio Eradication Initiative Over more than three decades, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has brought the world to the brink of ending polio. But reaching eradication alone is not enough. Keeping the world polio-free will require sustained investment in the systems and capacities that detect, prevent, and respond to poliovirus, long after the last case is found. That is the vision behind Sustaining a Polio-free World: A strategy for long-term success (SPW), which was presented to Member States at the Seventy-ninth World Health Assembly (WHA79) in Geneva in May 2026. A strategy built on broad consultation The strategy is the product of a rigorous development process that began at the end of 2024, involving dedicated technical working groups with representatives from across GPEI and broader immunization and health emergency stakeholders, two rounds of extensive stakeholder review, and formal engagement with WHO Member States across its regions as well as endorsement from the Polio Oversight Board. It is a revision of the polio post-certification strategy, published in 2018, and sets out the technical standards to sustain a polio-free world in perpetuity, beginning after certification of wild poliovirus type 1 eradication and variant poliovirus type 2 elimination. The strategy is organized around three core goals: (1) protect populations, by withdrawing oral polio vaccine from use in routine immunization and ensuring strong routine immunization; (2) detect and respond, through robust surveillance and outbreak response capacity; and (3) contain polioviruses across laboratories, vaccine manufacturers and other facilities to prevent reintroduction in a polio-free world. The SPW strategy reflects broad changes since 2018, including the development of the GPEI Polio Eradication Strategy 2022 – 2026 and its extension, new technologies (such as the novel oral