Kayembe, Mafuta); Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (
Neel, Alonge) Strategies to strengthen planning, promote accountability and learning, adapt programmatic activities, and engage with local communities were crucial in mitigating.barriers. This paper focuses on implementation of polio eradication activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Ethiopia, which are classified by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) as outbreak countries: They have halted indigenous wild poliovirus (WPV) but are experiencing reinfection as a result of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV). With the hope of illuminating key lessons learned that can inform ongoing polio eradication strategy and future health programmes, the paper describes and compares barriers to implementation, implementation strategies, and intended and unintended impacts of the GPEI within and across the 2 countries. This summary focuses on the communication elements highlighted in t