Africa to be declared free of polio
Disease control and prevention
The announcement that Nigeria is clear will mark a milestone in the global fight against infectious disease
Africa is set to be declared polio-free, a milestone in the global fight against infectious disease amid a pandemic that has diverted some resources away from health programmes not linked to coronavirus.
On Tuesday the World Health Organization will announce that Nigeria has been certified free of wild polio, which means the virus has been eradicated from the entire continent. It marks the second time in history that a virus has been eradicated from Africa, since smallpox 40 years ago.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, called it “one of the greatest public health achievements”.
The methods used in the fight against polio have been invaluable to Africa’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. They include smartphone-enabled tracing, engagement with local tribal authorities, a network of laboratories across 15 countries and genetic sequencing to identify the source of outbreaks. But more simple tools had also been essential, said Mr Tedros.
“As countries work to suppress Covid-19, many of the same basic traditional public health methods that are used to tackle polio, including contact tracing and surveillance, are key to identifying where the virus is and breaking the chains of transmission to save both lives and livelihoods,” he told the Financial Times in response to written questions.
People who have never been reached by the state have been reached by vaccinators
Shelby Grossman, Stanford University
Nigeria last recorded a wild polio case in 2016 when four children were paralysed in Borno, the north-eastern state at the heart of the decade-long Boko Haram insurgency.
As well as the difficulties of working amid militant violence, vaccinators faced immense logistical challenges and deep mistrust of vaccines in some areas.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to vaccinate his own grandchildren has been credited with easing fears. Combining vaccinations with other health services also made the vaccine more acceptable to the 87m people who live in extreme poverty in the country and who receive few government services.
Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have fanned out across Nigeria in the past few years, vaccinating roughly 50m children under the age of five. The effort was driven by the government, via the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a joint effort between the WHO, the US government, Unicef, Rotary International, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote.
Shelby Grossman, a researcher at Stanford University who has studied Nigeria’s polio response, said the country’s achievement showed what was possible even in so-called “weak states” that often fail to provide services to their citizens.
“There has been the massive political will to eradicate the disease, & huge amounts of domestic (and int'l) resources committed to it,” she wrote on Twitter. “People who have never been reached by the state have been reached by vaccinators. Villages that federal, state and even local governments did not know to exist have been found.”
Just eight years ago, Nigeria accounted for more than half of all global polio cases, according to the WHO, with 223 victims. The incidence of polio worldwide has fallen more than 99 per cent since 1988, when more than 350,000 children have paralysed annually in 125 countries, according to the WHO. The wild poliovirus now exists in just two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Still, the WHO warned that there was more to be done. It is working to rid sixteen African countries of vaccine-derived polioviruses, which are rare but can cause paralysis.
Africa has so far been the region least affected by the coronavirus pandemic, registering 1.2m confirmed cases and about 28,000 deaths as of Tuesday, a fraction of the global tally. But cases have been accelerating recently as countries have reopened their economies, and health officials continue to warn that fragile health systems could be overwhelmed if cases significantly spike.
The diversion of resources toward Covid-19 has dealt a blow to African efforts against other diseases, including malaria, measles and yellow fever.
But Mr Tedros said that the WHO was “now working with governments and front line health workers to ensure that vaccination is resumed quickly and safely”.
REF: The Financial Times Limited
Africa to be declared free of polio
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