Gates Foundation and Health Charities Rethink Polio Strategy in Face of Outbreak

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent $700-million on efforts to wipe out polio, and international organizations involved in the fight are changing their strategy on the disease as its spreads in Africa, says The Wall Street Journal.

Next week Rotary International, Unicef, the World Health Organization, and other groups that are involved in fighting the war on polio will announce an overhaul of their work based on problems they learned about during last summer’s African outbreak and other new incidences of the disease.

Since meetings last year with global-health official and with religious leaders in Nigeria, the country hardest hit by the outbreak, Mr. Gates has embarked on a new antipolio plan that mixes disease-specific efforts with a broader set of goals to improve health in poor countries.