Progress unravelled, and millions left vulnerable: how British aid cuts threaten British health too

Since 1988, worldwide polio vaccination efforts are estimated to have prevented about 20 million cases of paralysis and 1.6 million deaths. Photograph: Shahzaib Akber/EPA

Right now, aid reductions across the globe are jeopardising decades of progress against preventable diseases, leaving millions of people vulnerable. This retreat from global health threatens to unravel hard-won advances against diseases we have nearly conquered.

Polio, which paralysed hundreds of thousands of children annually just 40 years ago, has been eliminated in most parts of the world. Meanwhile, there has been a resurgence of diseases such as measles and cholera in populations besieged by conflict and climate emergencies.