Vaccine Shortage Threatens Polio Eradication Efforts

The international campaign to eradicate polio, which has vaccinated 2.5 billion people since it began in 1988—nearly all of them children—has faced one setback after another. Its goal of wiping out the disease from the planet, which was meant to happen in 2000, is about 16 years overdue—but getting close. The campaign has confined the disease to only three countries and hopes to reach its goal by the end of this decade.

Now, however, the fight faces a new threat: a critical shortage of vaccine.

The campaign—conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UNICEF, Rotary International and the Bill and Melinda that. “We don’t have specifics, but something is preventing the scale-up of vaccination production,” says , director of UNICEF’s supply division. “We are projecting now that we won’t have the quantities we need until 2018.”