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The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) recently granted $90 million in funds to help Pakistan implement the latest step of its polio elimination program through 2018. The IDB previously promised $227 million so that Pakistan could implement various disease elimination programs until 2015. In the past year, approximately 80 percent of the world’s wild poliovirus cases were located in Pakistan. A report from the World Health Organization showed serious vaccination gaps inside South Waziristan, Peshawar, Khyber Agency, northern Sindh, Karachi, and regions in Balochistan. For Pakistan and Afghanistan to eliminate polio, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative requires that health officials step up their efforts to stop the virus from transmitting from person to person.

The Islamic Development Bank recently allocated $32.6 million to stop children in Pakistan from suffering paralysis or death at the heads of polio. The disbursement was the first of the $227 million the IDB approved for polio eradication efforts in Pakistan. The disbursement was made through the WHO on August 3. The contribution will be used to help train and support more than 200,000 health workers and volunteers to immunize 33 million children in Pakistan with the oral polio vaccine. The money will also be used to improve immunization services for other vaccine-preventable diseases and to strengthen disease surveillance throughout Pakistan.The WHO expressed its appreciation to the IDB and the OIC as important partners in the growing global effort to eradicate polio.