One Year Without Polio Incidence in Nigeria
Posted by Ernest Hauser
Nigeria is on the brink of becoming Polio-free
Today, Nigeria has gone one year — longer than ever before — without a case of wild Polio. The last case was reported on 24 July 2014 in Kano state. Once the gateway to polio in Africa, Nigeria is paving the way to eradicating the disease on the continent.
But reaching the milestone is only one step on the final road to ending polio and it is too soon to celebrate victory. Until polio is eliminated everywhere, it can return to Nigeria and the rest of Africa. Less than a decade ago, in 2006, polio paralyzed 1,000 people in Nigeria.
For the African region to be certified polio-free, including Nigeria, there must be no polio cases for two more years. To do this, all children in Nigeria and throughout Africa — including those in hard-to-reach and underserved areas — must continue to be protected against the disease.
“The ultimate goal is to ensure that the routine immunization infrastructure is established to increase and sustain the level of herd immunity” [protection for people who are not immune that occurs when a large percentage of the population has been vaccinated], says Tunji Funsho, chair of the Nigeria PolioPlus Committee.
Once all surveillance data is processed, Nigeria will be poised to be taken off the list of polio-endemic countries by the World Health Organization (WHO) in September. That achievement would leave only two polio-endemic countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2014, Pakistan accounted for 85 percent of the world’s polio cases. As of 17 June, polio cases in Pakistan had decreased by nearly 70 percent.
District 5890 is a leader in PolioPlus support -Our District members have participated in Immunization activities in India and here at home, our members and clubs donated $151,162 to the Polio eradication effort this past year, and our District's members and clubs have given over $2,340,000 to The Rotary Foundation's PolioPlus Fund since the start of the effort in 1985.
The Rotary Club of Humble's members have contributed more than $25,000 to these efforts