Global Polio Eradication Initiative
"A polio-free world by "2000" was a goal set by the 1988 World Health Assembly. Working in cooperation, the World Health Organization, Rotary International, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), agreed to accelerate efforts targeted at eradicating polio.

At the end of 2002, Aventis Pasteur, Aventis' human vaccine group, announces that it will donate 30 million doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) through 2005, to the Global Polio Eradication Program. This donation should cover the entire vaccine needs for National Immunization Days scheduled in these countries. In fact, Aventis Pasteur is the longest-standing corporate partner in the initiative and has donated 120 million OPV doses since 1997. Other partners include WHO, UNICEF, Rotary International and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2002 Wyeth contributed $1 million to the Global Polio Laboratory Network, a key component of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The laboratory network, which Wyeth helped establish several years ago, is made up of three regional and 13 national laboratories that analyze polio cases and provide surveillance information for 44 African and three Eastern Mediterranean countries.

In 1996, Chiron Vaccines also joined the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Between 1997 and 1998, the company provided more than 20 million doses of polio vaccine to the WHO and UNICEF. During the summer of 2002, Chiron announced a second donation of 9.5 million doses of Oral Polio Vaccine targeted at ensuring that the Initiative achieves its goal of polio eradication by 2005. This donation will fulfill Chiron's 1996 commitment to donate 30 million doses of polio vaccine for international vaccination campaigns.

The collaboration now operates in five African countries: Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Southern Sudan. Overall, in the 15 years since the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched, the number of cases has fallen by 99.8%, from an estimated 350 000 cases in 1988 to 600 in 2001. In the same time period, the number of polio-infected countries was reduced from 125 to 10.