The world is moving closer to ending polio, Bill Gates says, with new pledges announced in Abu Dhabi pushing the global campaign to within about $440 million of the funding needed to finish the job by 2029.
Gates, whose foundation is the biggest private backer of the effort, said momentum is finally aligning after years of setbacks. “We’re with a reasonable chance of success, not a guarantee, but we’re reasonably close to the end,” he said in an interview. “So the next four years of funding make a big difference.”
The latest commitments, including $1.2 billion from the Gates Foundation and major contributions from Rotary, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Bloomberg Philanthropies, come amid a slump in global health financing, which is down almost 27% in 2025. This year is on track to be the first in at least a quarter of a century to see an increase in deaths among children under 5.
Polio, however, remains one of the few programs largely shielded from cuts, and the U.S. announced an additional $46 million. “Of all the global health items, I would be stunned if that ever got touched,” Gates, 70, said.
In all, donors announced $1.9 billion in Abu Dhabi, including $140 million from the UAE’s Mohamed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity and $62 million from Germany, according to organizers. Bloomberg Philanthropies is the charitable organization of Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative says the new funds will support efforts to vaccinate about 370 million children a year.
Ancient killer
Polio is a highly infectious virus that can cause lifelong paralysis and, in severe cases, death. For most people, it feels like a disease of the past, as decades of vaccination and clean-water improvements wiped it out across most of the world.
When global health leaders launched the polio campaign in 1988, they expected to finish it in a roughly 12-year span. More than once, global eradication has looked close, but the virus has proved hard to eliminate.
By 2019, cases of the original wild virus were rising again in Pakistan and Afghanistan — the only two countries where it still circulates — showing how hard it has been to finish the job.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted immunization programs, and a known weakness of the older oral polio vaccine reemerged: In places with low vaccination rates, it can occasionally give rise to a strain capable of circulating.
Outbreaks of that variant strain now persist, with cases reported in 18 countries. Wastewater detections and flare-ups in the U.S., U.K., Israel and Gaza in recent years underscore that neither form of polio is gone for good.
And in November 2025, authorities in Hamburg, Germany — a country that hasn’t seen wild polio for decades — detected the virus in routine wastewater testing. It was genetically linked to a strain circulating in Afghanistan. No illnesses were found, but the discovery showed how easily the virus can travel and why eradication must be global to be lasting.
Polio epicenter
The toughest work still lies in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the epicenter of its polio struggle, conflict and security threats have repeatedly halted vaccination drives.
Even so, programs are adapting. Community-based vaccination networks allow immunization to continue, said Steven Lauwerier, director for polio eradication with the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Afghanistan’s landscape shifted dramatically after the Taliban takeover in 2021. New rules, including the requirement that women be accompanied by a male relative to leave home, have complicated the vaccination model that existed for decades.
Yet health workers have found workarounds. “In Kandahar we are also adding other health services, nutritional screening,” Lauwerier said, describing highly targeted efforts in the highest-risk districts.
After decades of campaigns, fatigue has set in among communities and workers alike. “We are so close. If we stop it now, the costs of stopping are just dramatically higher than continuing,” Lauwerier said. If campaigns falter, “it will spread to everywhere in the world very fast.”
Recent history shows that even in complex political environments, elimination is possible. “People guessed that India would be the last place we’d have polio, but we haven’t had a case there since 2011,” Gates said.
One thing Gates is determined to remove from the equation is money. “I work hard to make sure funding will not be the reason that polio eradication fails,” he said.
Smallpox remains the only human disease ever eradicated.
Furlong writes for Bloomberg.
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