Third Report of the Independent Monitoring Board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative

This report from the September 28-30 2011 meeting of the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) stresses that interruption of polio transmission by the end of 2012 will only be achieved if weaknesses at country and global level can be swiftly corrected and political and financial support is bolstered.

This report examines progress country by country, and also describes cross-GPEI findings. For example: Case numbers are rising in five of the seven key countries; outbreaks are posing continuing unwelcome surprises; as many milestones are being missed as are being met; India is alone amongst the four endemic countries in being on track, but Pakistan and Nigeria are of major concern; and there is some positive news from each of Angola, Chad, and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), but, nine months after their original deadline, none of them is nearing completion.

A key IMB recommendation includes spurring more innovation and strengthening accountability and management at all levels of the programme. The core communication-related lesson relates to advocacy and community participation; the following quotation from the Nigeria-focused section of the report is illustrative: "There is no shortage of high-level advocacy and commitment in Nigeria. The challenge, as elsewhere, is in aligning the actions of state and local leaders with this. Both political and traditional leaders need to be involved." Similarly, in the DR Congo: "We previously underscored the importance of gaining the President's active involvement in the programme. The fact that he used a meeting in August to hold each of his governors to account for actions that they are taking against polio was a welcome development."

Another key communication-centred observation: "Polio eradication will succeed if its vast array of individuals are motivated, organized, well-linked, and well-led. At its heart, this is a challenge of change management. It is common for change management programmes to pay too little attention to the human factors, to over-orientate themselves to the technical elements of a challenge. The GPEI risks doing the same..."

The IMB states: "We continue to invite comments from all readers of our reports. These can be directed to our independent secretariat – IMBSecretariat@polioeradication.org "