The Gates Foundation (do we still have to refer to it by its full, formal name?) is giving a whopping $255 million to help eradicate polio from Earth.  Bill made the announcement to a Rotary International conference today (1/21/09), because the Rotarians have been leading the push for polio eradication (raising money, volunteering, and using their local branches in places like India and Nigeria to push for political support).

Polio remains present in just four countries — India, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.   You can imagine the political/warfare challenges to delivering vaccine to remote villages in the “-stans.”  In India, the pockets of disease are also in remote areas (mostly in Uttar Pradesh).  And Nigeria has had a host of troubles, including a rumor five years ago that the vaccines were a plot against Muslim girls.  That caused a huge setback and a resurgence of the disease.

Some additional challenges today have to do with how polio behaves in the presence of other endemic diseases.  In those cases, it’s harder for the vaccine to provoke immunity, and more doses are required (sometimes 10 doses!).

There’s been a lot of debate over whether it’s worth the huge cost (billions of dollars) to wipe out the last few cases of one disease, when so many other diseases are causing more harm.  There are now fewer than 2,000 cases of polio a year.  But global health leaders say the resurgence we saw in Africa after the Nigerian troubles shows that you can’t permanently contain this highly contagious disease.  (It’s spread by a virus, either in contaminated water or by people who are carriers.)

Gates gave quite an inspirational speech to the Rotarians in San Diego.  I didn’t get a chance to hear it, but I was sent a transcript.  It turns out his wife Melinda has an aunt who was afflicted with polio, and has been in braces most of her life.

If the campaign succeeds, polio would be the second disease eradicated, after smallpox (officially gone as of 1980, according to the World Health Organization).