Bye-bye polio

Nigeria appears to be moving close to becoming a country free from poliomyelitis disease, simply known as polio. If the country can sustain the present tempo in its fight against the disease, Nigeria will soon be removed from the thin list of countries with polio.
Last Friday, the country marked a full year without recording a fresh polio case, a development which many have described as commendable. However, the feat would not have been possible if not for the concerted efforts and collaboration from the international community.
The period between July 24, 2014 and July 24, 2015, marked the longest period that Nigeria would go without recording a new polio case. Another good thing for Africa is that there is hope that by next month, the continent would have gone a full year without a new polio case. The last case recorded in Africa occurred in Somalia on August 11, 2014 while the last case of polio in Nigeria was reported exactly a year last Friday. It was in a 16-month-old boy from Sumaila Local Government Area of Kano State.
This brings closer the prospect that polio would soon become the second human infectious disease after smallpox to be eradicated in Nigeria.
The success so far against the disease was not without some hitches. In fact, many experts had thought that the milestone would elude Nigeria, as internal conflict hampered the battle against the disease some years ago.
Nigeria had struggled to contain polio since some northern states imposed a polio vaccine ban on their states in mid-2003. Some state governors and religious leaders in the predominantly Islamic north were said to have alleged that the vaccines were contaminated by western powers to spread sterility and HIV/AIDS e among Muslims.
But the resolve of traditional leaders throughout the country who pledged in January 2009 to support immunisation campaigns and push parents to have their children vaccinated was a big boost to the success story today.
But at about the same time, Boko Haram insurgents began a bloody insurgency push to carve out an Islamist state in the northeast, thereby preventing volunteer workers from achieving much. But the sensitisation and intensive campaign, using both the mainstream and local media, to disseminate the necessary information about the disease and the need for vaccination had given the exercise a boost.
Even till 2012, Nigeria still seemed to be losing the battle against polio, recording more than half of all the world’s cases.
But Nigeria’s chairman of the expert review committee on polio eradication, Oyewale Tomori, said the federal government’s prioritisation of the polio fight, including establishing emergency operations centres to coordinate vaccination campaigns and reach children in previously inaccessible areas, helped a great deal in driving the project to the present height.
“We are well on the way. It is a time of great happiness, but we don’t want to celebrate prematurely,” Tomori said.
The Director of Rotary International polio’s programme, Carol Pandak, described Nigeria’s feat as an extraordinary achievement, adding that it showed the value of government leadership’s taking ownership of the campaign.
Until the 1950s, polio crippled thousands of people a year, both in rich and poor nations alike. According to experts, the poliomyelitis virus attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection.
It often spreads among young children and in areas with poor sanitation – a factor that encourages its transmission in areas of conflict and unrest. But experts said it could be halted with comprehensive, population-wide vaccination.
Then, the disease was endemic in 125 countries and caused paralysis in nearly 1,000 children a day. By contrast, so far, in 2015, there have only been 33 new cases worldwide – 28 of them in Pakistan, with the rest in Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Ado Muhammad, said that Nigeria was one step closer to achieving the goal of eradicating polio soon.
He said that if all pending laboratory investigations return negative in the next few weeks, Nigeria would officially be taken off the list of polio-endemic countries.
Meanwhile, Nigeria will only be certified polio free by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2017, provided it maintains its zero case status, further strengthens its surveillance system, improves routine immunisation and maintains high quality campaigns.
“We recognize that it will only be through strong commitment, coordination underpinned by accountability that Nigeria will be in a position to stop transmission and sustain the gains through to eradication in 2017. Today we are looking forward to 2017. We remain committed to finding concrete and sharp solutions to overcome the remaining bottlenecks until we achieve eradication in this country.
“We recognize the need to sustain and re-double our efforts to ensure that every child is reached. As Nigeria marks one year without a case of polio and embarks on the road to certification, it is important to pay tribute to the hundreds of thousands of vaccinators and community mobilisers as well as traditional and religious leaders, parents and caregivers who have supported polio eradication efforts for more than a decade, despite the challenges,” Muhammad said.
A general practitioner, Dr. Teben Adebowale of Chrisland Medical Centre, Lagos, in a telephone interview with Daily Sun, warned that it was not yet time for Nigeria to celebrate. He said as long as polio remains in any part of world, every child is at risk. He stressed the need to sustain all efforts to ensure that every child is reached for vaccination.
He said the most reliable prevention of polio remained a continuous vaccination, advising that all healthy or unhealthy children between the ages of six weeks and 18 years should be vaccinated against polio as part of their complete vaccination schedule.
He explained that polio or infantile paralysis is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. He said approximately 90 per cent of infections come with no symptoms, adding another 10 per cent of people have minor symptoms such as fever, headache, vomiting, diarrhoea, neck stiffness and pains in the arms and legs.
“Paralytic polio is the most serious type of polio. It causes paralysis. In paralytic polio, the poliovirus invades the central nervous system – the spinal cord and the brain. Paralysis usually happens within the first week. The individual may lose the ability to use one or both legs, arms, and may not be able to breathe without the help of a machine.
“This achievement and complete eradication of polio in Nigeria will save hundreds of thousands of children from lifelong paralysis or death each year. To win the war, health workers, political, traditional, religious and community leaders must continue the campaign.
Polio can be spread through different ways; people who have not been immunized against polio or have a weakened immune system may contract polio from individuals who are receiving the oral polio vaccine.
“In Nigeria, including in other developing nations, polio is spread by eating food or drinking water contaminated by the poliovirus. The poliovirus may also be contracted through direct contact with infected stool or throat secretions. The virus resides only in humans and enters the environment in the faeces of someone who is infected. Polio is so contagious that anyone living with a recently infected person is likely to become infected, too. People carrying the poliovirus can spread the virus for weeks in their faeces,” Adebowale said