Two Billion nOPV2 Polio Vaccines Deployed

As 2025 draws to a close, I want to begin by first thanking the millions of health workers, vaccinators, surveillance officers, laboratory scientists, social mobilizers, and community volunteers who carried polio eradication forward during what was a difficult year, wrote Dr. Jamal Ahmed, Director, Polio Eradication, WHO, and Chair of the Strategy Committee of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. 

In a Dear Colleagues letter, Dr. Ahmed recently offered various insights on December 18, 2025, such as these clips: 

These challenges demanded difficult choices. They reinforced the need for sharper prioritization, greater efficiency, and uncompromising focus on what matters most to interrupt transmission.

In direct response to the realities of 2025, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) developed a focused 2026 Action Plan as an operational companion to the Polio Eradication Strategy 2022–2029. This Action Plan is grounded in realism and urgency. It protects non-negotiable functions while adapting to financial constraints, and it prioritizes impact and execution.

The plan focuses on concentrating resources on the highest-risk geographies, including the remaining subnational areas with persistent wild poliovirus and circulating variant poliovirus transmission.

It includes intensifying and refining vaccination strategies, expanding use of novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2), and targeted use of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) to close. 

More than two billion doses of nOPV2 have now been delivered globally.

This innovation has fundamentally strengthened our ability to control and prevent variant poliovirus outbreaks and stands as a testament to what science, partnership, and disciplined execution can achieve together. 

Introduction of the IPV-containing hexavalent vaccine and scale-up of fractional-dose IPV are further examples of scientific innovations that help advance the effort.

It is important for us to remember, even before eradication is achieved, that the impact of this effort has been profound. Tens of millions of people are walking today, and millions are alive who might not have survived.

Entire communities that were once beyond the reach of basic health services have been reached with vaccines, protection, and care. This legacy matters, and it must not be forgotten as we focus on finishing the job, added Dr. Ahmed.

The unedited version is linked at Vax-Before-Travel.com.