Letter to Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States - Increasing Funding for Polio Eradication

Letter

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today led a bipartisan group of nine Senators in sending a letter urging President-Elect Barack Obama to increase funding for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in the fiscal year 2010 budget and continue to provide critical support for global efforts to eradicate polio.

The text of the letter follows:

January 14, 2009

The Honorable Barack Obama
President-Elect
Transition Team Headquarters
541 6th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

Dear Mr. President-Elect:

We are writing to request your consideration for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in your fiscal year 2010 budget proposal. The polio eradication initiative is one of the largest, most successful public-private health initiatives ever undertaken. The tremendous progress made in the fight against polio would not be possible without the financial and political commitment of the United States.

Polio eradication is a cost-effective public health investment. More than 10 million children will be paralyzed in the next 40 years if the world fails to capitalize on the more than $6 billion already invested in polio eradication. Eradicating polio will reap substantial financial, as well as humanitarian, dividends through foregone polio treatment and rehabilitation costs -- these savings could exceed $1 billion per year.

The United States is the leading public sector donor to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and to date has provided nearly $1.5 billion to support the technical leadership of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Polio Eradication Initiative of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

As a result of this global effort, two billion children have been immunized, five million spared disability and over 250,000 deaths have been averted from polio. Polio incidence has been reduced by more than 99%, but until the world is polio-free, every child, even those in the United States, is at risk. Only four countries still have indigenous transmission of wild polio virus: Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. We must complete polio eradication, or face the prospect of returning to a world in which thousands of children that could have been protected through the simplest of all health interventions, administration of oral polio vaccine, are needlessly subjected to life-long disability, suffering and poverty.

The United States' polio eradication effort has enjoyed broad bipartisan support from Congress and also from the past two presidential administrations. The success achieved by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative stands as a model for effective public/private cooperation and inspires confidence to undertake the global health initiatives that you have supported in the past.

We urge you to continue the United States' leadership by highlighting polio eradication among your international public health priorities, maintaining the United States' investment in polio eradication in the fiscal year 2010 budget proposal and by urging the leaders in the remaining polio endemic countries to intensify their efforts to achieve polio eradication.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer Bob Corker
United States Senator United States Senator

Sheldon Whitehouse Roger F. Wicker
United States Senator United States Senator

Jack Reed Sherrod Brown
United States Senator United States Senator

Richard J. Durbin Mark Begich
United States Senator United States Senator

Joseph I. Lieberman
United States Senator