World leaders yesterday added their weight to a push to eradicate polio, pledging millions of dollars in new funds to bring an end to the crippling and potentially fatal disease.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who is hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, said her country would spend A$50 million (US$53.5 million) over four years toward the global fight.
“While polio remains anywhere in the world it is a threat to anyone,” she told a joint news conference with leaders from Britain, Canada and two of the world’s four polio endemic countries — Pakistan and Nigeria — by her side.
“We are here today to demonstrate our commitment to ending the fight against polio, that is ending polio for all time,” Gillard said.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his country would commit further investments in polio surveillance and immunizations without giving a figure, while philanthropist Bill Gates pledged US$40 million in new funding.
“We’re at a crossroads,” Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said via a video message, adding that recent cases in China highlighted the risk of polio spreading back across the globe.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said he would raise annual spending on fighting polio from US$17 million to US$30 million from next year.
Jonathan said while the disease had been reduced by 75 percent in the African nation, it remained present in some states and had started to make a comeback over the past year.
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, whose government in January pledged ￡40 million (US$64.5 million) to fight the disease, said the world was in sight of eradicating the disease.
“Today for the vast majority of countries, polio has been eliminated and the harrowing images of children in iron lungs banished to the past,” he said. “But for all this progress we haven’t quite finished the job and the truth is that nearly eradicated is just not good enough.”
Cameron said the world now ran the danger of going backwards on ending the disease, which mainly affects children.
“If we fail to get rid of polio we run the risk of seeing it spread back to countries from which it has been eradicated,” he said.
Polio remains a challenge for the 54-nation Commonwealth, with three of the world’s four endemic countries — India, Nigeria and Pakistan — members. Afghanistan is the fourth state in which the highly contagious disease has not been eradicated.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said he was concerned that polio had re-emerged in his country, which shares a long, rugged and porous border with war-ravaged Afghanistan.
“This situation is totally unacceptable,” he said, adding that medical staff often had difficulty reaching those in need given the difficult terrain and the problem of insurgents.
In areas where the oral vaccine was most needed, he said, there were people who were “so fanatical they don’t let the doctors into this area.”
“But we are trying our best,” he added.
Gillard said it was possible the disease, which in 1954 held Perth in its grip, preventing Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II from staying onshore during her maiden visit Down Under, could be ended forever.
“Change is possible,” she said. “This is an issue which within our lifetime was a problem right around the world. Now we are in grasping distance of the end of polio worldwide and that is what we are determined to do.”
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
Forecasters in Europe yesterday warned of exceptional heat as record temperatures driven by a “heat dome” push temperatures well above seasonal norms across the continent. The surge follows a record-breaking Monday, with France logging its hottest day in the month of May on record, its weather agency said, and the UK also posting unprecedented highs. A so-called “heat dome” of warm air from northern Africa trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe is behind the high temperatures not usually seen until high summer. Restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy, beaches in southwest France filled earlier than usual and
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
RSS