How polio can be a global emergency when cases are at an all-time low

On Friday, the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, voted that polio represents a global emergency at the very point at which cases of the deadly, paralysis-causing virus are at an all-time low. How can it be a global emergency if we’ve got poliomyelitis on the ropes? The answer is two-fold: in the three remaining countries where polio is endemic (meaning it’s occurring without spreading from somewhere else), the number of cases have actually gone up. And the polio eradication effort, run by Rotary International, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, and the United Nations, is short $945 million, a funding gap of 50%, because governments are giving less money due to tough economic times. With a major push from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has donated $1 billion to polio eradication since 2009, stunning progress has been made. There were just 650 cases of...