Africa is declared free of wild polio at’milestone’

Africa has been declared free of wild polio by the African Regional Certification Commission, an independent body.

Polio usually affects children under the age of 5 and sometimes causes irreversible paralysis. Death may occur if the respiratory muscles are affected.

Twenty-five years ago, thousands of children in Africa were paralyzed by the virus.

The disease is currently only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There is no cure, but polio vaccines protect children for life.

• Africa Live: Updates on this and other stories

Nigeria accounts for more than half of the world’s cases in less than 10 years and is the last African country to be declared free of wild polio.

The vaccination campaign in Nigeria involved a great deal of effort to reach remote and dangerous locations under threat of extreme violence, killing some health workers in the process.

What is Polio? Is polio eradicated in Africa now?

Polio is a virus that spreads from person to person, usually through contaminated water. It can cause paralysis by attacking the nervous system.

Two out of three wild poliovirus strains have been eradicated worldwide. On Tuesday, Africa is declared free of last-remaining strains of wild poliovirus.

Currently, over 95% of Africa’s population is vaccinated. This was one of the conditions that the African Regional Certification Board set before proclaiming the absence of wild polio on the continent.

Currently, only poliovirus derived from vaccine remains in Africa, and 177 cases have been confirmed this year.

It is a rare form of virus that can mutate from an oral polio vaccine and spread to immunocompromised communities.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified many of these cases in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Angola.

How did Africa eliminate wild polio?

Without a cure, the vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1952 hoped that children would be protected from the disease. In 1961, Albert Sabin pioneered an oral polio vaccine used in vaccination programs in most countries around the world.

In 1996, poliovirus paralyzed more than 75,000 children across the continent-all countries were affected.

That year, Nelson Mandela launched the “Kick Polio Out of Africa” ​​program, mobilizing millions of health workers to go from village to village and hand over vaccines.

This was supported by a coalition of groups, including Rotary International, who have been leading polio vaccination efforts since the 1980s.

Since 1996, billions of oral polio vaccines have been provided, preventing an estimated 1.8 million wild poliovirus infections.

• What is a vaccine?

What are the challenges?

The last communities at risk of polio live in some of the most complex places to carry out vaccination campaigns.

Nigeria is the last country in Africa to report a case of wild polio-the epicenter of the 2016 Boko Haram uprising, in the state of Borno, far northeast of Nigeria.

At that time, the country was making great progress, and it was frustrating because two years had passed since the incident was unidentified.

Outside of Nigeria, the last place to see polio cases in 2014 was in the Puntland region of Somalia.

Conflicts with the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram have made access to parts of Nigeria particularly the state of Borno particularly difficult.

More than 2 million people have been evacuated in this battle. Frontline workers (95% women) sailed across conflict areas such as Lake Chad by boat to deliver vaccines to remote communities.

The spread of rumors and misinformation about the vaccine has also delayed vaccination efforts.

In 2003, many of Kano and other northern states after the Muslim religious leaders reported that the vaccine was contaminated with fertility drugs as part of an American plan to sterilize Muslim women. , Vaccination has been suspended. The charges were dismissed after laboratory tests by Nigerian scientists.

The vaccine campaign resumed the following year, but rumors continued. In 2013, 9 female polio vaccinations were killed in two alleged shootings by Boko Haram at the Kano Health Center.

It took decades to achieve eradication and overcome suspicions about the vaccine.

How Polio Survivors Made Changes

Winning the trust of the community is key.

Mr. Mizubuff Rawan Didi, Chairman of the Nigerian Polio Survivors Association, said the role of survivors is crucial in persuading people to accept the campaign.

“Many people have rejected the polio vaccine, but they have a hard time talking about how hard we are to reach them, sometimes crawling. Ask them: Like us?'”

From survivors of polio to traditional and religious leaders, school teachers, parents, volunteers, and health workers, a huge coalition developed to defeat polio. They worked together and traveled to a remote community to immunize their children.

• “I opposed vaccination until my son got polio.”

How serious is polio?

Polio, or polio, primarily affects children under the age of five.

Early symptoms include fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck, and pain in the limbs. It can also invade the nervous system and cause complete paralysis in a few hours.

Once in 200 infections causes an irreversible paralysis. Among paralyzed people, 5 to 10% of people die when the respiratory muscles do not move.

Will Wild Polio Recur?

Polio can easily be imported into countries without polio, from which it can spread rapidly among unvaccinated people.

This happened in Angola and defeated polio in 2001, despite decades of civil war.

The country was liberated from polio for four years until 2005, when many cases were believed to have been brought in from abroad.

The WHO says it is important for countries to remain vigilant and avoid self-satisfaction until global eradication takes place.

If they lose their defenses by neglecting the vaccination, wild polio begins to spread rapidly again.

Eradication of all types of polio, including vaccine-derived polio, requires ongoing surveillance and vaccination efforts to prevent future disease paralysis in children.