Japan and the GPEI: Toward a Polio-Free World

In the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, other infectious diseases, including poliovirus, are apt to be forgotten, but the significance of routine vaccination against preventable infectious diseases should not be underestimated. Poliovirus is an infectious disease that seriously affects human body. There used to be more than 125 countries which had suffered from wild poliovirus endemic in the 1980s. As a result of endeavors by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) established in 1988, the number of wild poliovirus endemic countries has been reduced to only two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan. This chapter sheds light on the importance of Japan’s contributions to poliovirus eradication by contextualizing Japan’s experience in eradicating its own wild poliovirus, and Japan’s financial contributions toward the GPEI in pursuit of a “polio-free” world.