On the 16th, at the World Health Assembly in Berlin, Germany, the Bill Gates Foundation announced that it will invest $1.2 billion to end all types of polio worldwide.

According to the "Voice of America" report on the same day, the Gates Foundation said that the above-mentioned funds will be used to support the global polio eradication plan. The focus is on helping Pakistan and Afghanistan end polio while avoiding new outbreaks caused by mutated polioviruses. Previously, the Gates Foundation donated nearly $5 billion to the Global Polio Eradication Program.

Polio is an acute infectious disease caused by poliovirus that seriously endangers children's health. With the joint efforts of the international community, there are only two polio-endemic countries in the world, that are Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So far this year, Pakistan has reported 20 polio cases, while Afghanistan has reported two, the Associated Press said. The Associated Press pointed out that since 1988, the international community has invested a huge amount of about 1 billion US dollars in polio eradication every year, but several previous polio eradication plans have not been achieved.

In addition, there have even been cases of vaccine-derived polio transmission in Africa and even the United States, Israel, and other countries. For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated in September saying that previously identified cases of polio in New York state met the World Health Organization-defined criteria for "transmission of vaccine-derived poliovirus."

According to experts, when the immunity of people living in the same community to the poliovirus is reduced to a certain level, the attenuated virus in oral vaccines spreads for a long time, and the virus may undergo genetic mutation, regain the ability to infect the central nervous system and cause paralysis.

Inoculation of young children with the polio vaccine is of great significance in eradicating polio. According to UNICEF statistics, by 2021, the polio vaccination rate of young children aged 12-23 months in Afghanistan will be about 75%, and that in Pakistan will be about 83%. Political instability and war have seriously hindered vaccination efforts.

In the United States, polio vaccination rates are similarly low in some areas. In August, ABC said that the state with the lowest polio vaccination rate in the United States was Washington, at 80.4 percent. In addition, there are also media reports that in New York City, the polio vaccination rate in some communities is even less than 60%.

The analysis believes that American society has always had doubts about vaccines and opposition to compulsory vaccination. The recent new crown pneumonia epidemic has had an impact on normal vaccination work, further reducing the vaccination rate.