Supporting efforts to wipe out polio by the end of next year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation have announced grants totaling $78 million to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

The grants ($50 million from Gates and $28 million from the U.N. Foundation) will be used to support a global vaccine-delivery system and track the disease's occurrence.

The initiative -- supported by the World Health Organization, Rotary International and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) since its inception in 1988 -- wants to make the world polio-free in the next five years. The initiative hopes to raise $400 million to meet that goal.

Both Turner and the Gateses are urging the public and private sectors to match their gifts. The organizations involved in the polio campaign recently asked governments around the world to give another $50 million for immunization campaigns.

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