It is vital to control diseases such as polio – so why is the UK cutting global vaccine funding? | Helen Bedford

The resurgence of polio and the spread of monkeypox proves again that diseases don’t respect borders. No one is safe until we all are We are talking again about polio – a disease that ran rampant in the 1950s, paralysing thousands of children every year. The successful introduction of polio vaccine in 1956 into the UK, and later more widely, has resulted in the elimination of this once dreaded disease from Europe and indeed most of the world. After the successful global eradication of smallpox in 1980, polio is the next human disease on the list targeted for eradication.But for all the...