“…Thanks to a new arrangement announced last week, which was made in partnership among GAVI, our foundation and the pharmaceutical industry, a major barrier to global vaccination with [inactivated polio vaccine (IPV)] is erased now with the availability of IPV at a significantly-reduced price for the world’s poorest countries. … GAVI is working together with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to help these 73 poorest countries purchase and deliver these vaccines to all their children. This new collaboration between organizations created to work on routine immunization and polio eradication is symbolic of the fact that polio eradication will help us get better at global health in general. … This is a big step toward polio eradication — and a big step toward global health equity,” Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Co-Chair Bill Gates writes in the foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog (3/4).