Africa's Long Journey to Eradicate Polio : Hope Rising ....

The journey to a polio free world began in 1988. At the time 125 countries reported 350,000 cases of the disease.

Over the years; the Americas, Europe and South-Eastern Asia were declared polio-free with the latest being India and 10 other countries in the South East Asian region declared polio free in March 2014 which was after they had gone 3 years without any case of polio detected within the region.

In year 2013, Nigeria; the then polio hub in Africa still saw 416 cases of the disease. This was at the time a huge progress towards polio eradication within Africa and globally.

On the 24th of July 2014, Nigeria for the first time since the Global Polio Eradication Initiative began about 27 years ago, did not record any case of the wild polio virus in a one year period.

This victory is still however being celebrated cautiously as data verification to ascertain this is in process. Moreover the country still needs to go two more years without any case of polio before she can be declared polio free indeed.

In Africa as a whole, August 11 2015 marked a whole year without a single case of the wild polio virus recorded within the continent. The last case within the continent was recorded in Somalia on the 11th of August 2014.

With Polio being a dreaded debilitating disease governments, non governmental organizations, security forces and every group involved in the fight is being called upon to watch out for any form of slackness or apathy at this precarious point in this ongoing battle.

The security crisis in Northern Nigeria is a source of serious concern as this has caused several set backs and lulls in the progress made over the years.
Children in hard to reach and conflict volatile areas have had to go unvaccinated for these reasons and more; one of which is also lack of cooperation and trust between the parents or caregivers and the government.


In February of year 2013, nine polio vaccinators were shot and killed at health centers in Northern Nigeria.

With records of attacks against vaccinators in this region it is difficult to assume that every child in these conflict zones and hard to reach regions is vaccinated against polio.

The concern is that these unvaccinated children may create a set back in the already made progress.
In some of the said areas, currently the herd immunity is said to be about 75%. This is not the goal, however at this point we can safely say that we are close. 
According to Dr Tunji Funsho who is the Chairman of the Nigeria National Polio Plus Committee for Rotary International; " .... This gives us some level of comfort that majority of the children are covered so the danger of non-immunized children being infected with polio virus is not there,"

Furthermore, Dr Hamid Jafari, of the WHO Polio Eradication Initiative has said that :

"The focus remains on continuing to vaccinate children, no matter where they live, and to strengthen surveillance everywhere."

It is our hope that Nigeria and the rest of Africa will maintain this feat so that the global goal for a Polio free world can be realized in full.