INTRODUCTION
This is the 14th report produced by the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). Since our last report, the membership of the Board has been streamlined and reconstituted to respond to the establishment of a polio Transition Independent Monitoring Board (TIMB). In the absence of a separate monitoring function for the transition and legacy work of the GPEI, in its previous reports, the IMB had commented periodically on transition planning matters.
The reconstituted IMB will now focus exclusively on objective one of the GPEI strategic plan 2013-2018: “Stop all wild poliovirus transmission by the end of 2014 and new vaccine-derived poliovirus outbreaks within 120 days of confirmation of the first case.” This objective became modified as a result of the Polio Oversight Board’s decision to choose a most likely scenario based on modelling to support work on financing the Polio Programme. From a range of dates for interrupting transmission globally, and in the individual endemic countries, four scenarios were constructed, ranging from “optimistic” through “intermediate” to “pessimistic.” The Board chose an “intermediate” scenario, where global transmission would be interrupted by 2016. In the “pessimistic” scenario this date was the end of 2017.
The 13th IMB Report was published in August 2016.
It assessed progress on objective one (modified) and therefore looked towards the Polio Programme’s deadline of interrupting poliovirus transmission globally by the end of December 2016. The GPEI had asked that there should be no IMB meeting in the autumn of 2016. This was to enable total programmatic focus on achieving the end of year goal. This, the 14th IMB report, follows the Board’s May 2017 meeting, in London, with GPEI staff, donors, extended partners, and health ministers of the three polio endemic countries.
