Five doctors working on the frontline of disease elimination have each received up to $200,000 from Abu Dhabi’s Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE) to support new projects aimed at stamping out the last vestiges of polio, malaria, river blindness and lymphatic filariasis from their communities.

The recipients of the inaugural Falcon Awards for Disease Elimination - launched in April and unveiled at Expo 2020 Dubai - were chosen from a field of 220 applications from more than 40 countries.

Their submissions included: rapid polio testing for polio in Afghanistan and Pakistan; the mapping of river blindness transmission zones in Ghana; incentivising community leaders to promote polio vaccines; and extended and joint surveillance of malaria and lymphatic filariasis in the Philippines.

“Innovation is vital if we want to eliminate ancient diseases of poverty,” said Simon Bland, GLIDE’s chief executive officer. “The quality of applications we received from individuals and organisations based in disease-endemic countries, is testament to the will to consign these diseases to the history books. We just need to act on it.”

In Pakistan, Dr Jai Das, of Aga Khan University, will use his award money to tackle vaccine hesitancy – the main barrier to the country stamping out its final cases of polio – by incentivising community leaders to promote vaccination. If leaders meet their immunisation targets, they will be rewarded with new community infrastructure of their choice.

The aim is to counter misconceptions about vaccine side-effects held by some of Pakistan’s religious and political groups. In some parts of the country, resistance to vaccination is so extreme, there have been deadly attacks on immunisation teams and their security escorts.

“Behavourial change is difficult, but we have used this approach previously to promote better sanitation and tackle incidence of childhood diarrhoea and it showed very good results,” said Dr Das. “The community feels empowered because they have short-term achievable targets and they get rewards that they choose.”

“They feel like they are making their own decisions, rather than having external people coming in telling them what to do,” he added

Dr Das will pilot the scheme in two municipalities where there are high levels of polio vaccine refusals and then compare vaccine take-up with other municipalities where there are no incentives. If successful, it will be rolled out to other parts of Balochistan and Karachi, where polio immunisation is lower.

“If we are able to show positive results from this initiative, I think it will have a huge impact,” he said.