Last week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Nigeria polio-free. With this development, the country has recorded a major victory in the fight against the disease, especially in the light of the fact that in 2012, it accounted for more than half of all the polio cases worldwide. This is welcome news given that the last reported case of wild poliovirus was in July 24, 2014 and since then a full 12 months have lapsed without Nigeria reporting any fresh case of the debilitating disease. Now, only two countries – Pakistan and Afghanistan remain on the polio-endemic list. There is no denying the fact that the road to a polio-free Nigeria was very long and tortuous. Initial efforts to eradicate the disease began in 1976 when the federal government set up the National Programme on Immunisation (NPI). The effort failed. In 1979, it was restarted, leading to the emergence of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation(EPI).

 

The eradication was a herculean task, and it almost did not happen at all. For more than a generation, it has been Rotary that has led the drive to eradicate polio, administering vaccinations to 2.5 billion children in 122 countries at a cost of $1.4 billion. With the help of UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Centres for Disease Control, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other groups, the effort paid off comparatively fast.

 

We join in applauding the concerted efforts by all levels of government, civil society, religious leaders and other stakeholders who transverse all the nooks and crannies of the country repeatedly to immunise more than 45 million children under the age of five years, to check the spread of polio. While deserved, the victory did not come without hiccups and opposition from entrenched political and religious interests.

It was well known that at the height of the polio eradication drive some religious leaders in the northern parts of Nigeria opposed the programme on account of the unsubstantiated allegation that it was a design by Western countries to wipe out the Muslim population.

 

 

Moreover, some clerics, especially in Kano, spread the rumours that the polio vaccine caused sterility in girls, resulting in the suspension of immunisation efforts in the state.

The resistance led to physical attacks on health workers and volunteers in those communities opposed to the eradication campaign.

Such trenchant opposition was responsible for the prolonged hiatus at combating the disease in the North, long after the southern part of the country was certified free of the poliovirus. While we praise the efforts and determination put into the polio eradication campaign, we see the imperative in increasing gains made and ensure the country has no new polio cases now and in the next two years. Not until that happens, we might as well say that Nigeria is not out of the woods yet.

 

Even as the country is officially off the list of endemic countries, the poliovirus can lurk in sewage and elsewhere, and since there can be up to 200 asymptomatic cases of the disease for every paralytic one, there is no telling how many human virus reservoirs are still at large. A polio-free Nigeria means a polio-free Africa given that the country was the only one of the 47 on the continent where the crippling disease was still endemic

What the country needs to do to maintain the current zero case status is to strengthen its surveillance system, improve routine immunisation and maintain high quality campaigns. We therefore call on governments at all level not to rest on their oars and to launch massive polio prevention campaign through improved vaccine coverage and supplementary immunisation of children in their respective zones.

 

By Daily Times