In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two countries where polio now remains endemic, a total of 19 polio cases have been reported so far this year, the lowest-ever annual tally.
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Just as Africa was due to celebrate two polio-free years, it has been announced that the virus has paralysed two children in Nigeria’s Borno state.
A day before, the Nigerian government confirmed that two toddlers were paralyzed by the disease, almost a year after the country was declared polio-free. The World Health Organization has said that it was not transported from either of the country, meaning Nigeria was never polio free.
A statement signed by Olajide Oshundun, Assistant Director, Press and Public Relations Ministry of Health, said two children from Gwoza and Jere Local Government Areas were affected.
The militant Islamist Boko Haram insurgency in north-east Nigeria has made some areas of Borno hard to access in recent years.
“Confirmation of wild poliovirus in Nigeria is a disappointing setback but doesn’t change our determination to end polio, or the fact that the world has continued to make progress toward polio eradication”, according to a CDC news release.
This distrust of western medicine has hindered the decades-long effort to eradicate the disease.
One of the paralyzed children tested positive for polio on July 13, Zaffran said, and the virus was then found in tests conducted on healthy people who had contact with that child.
He disclosed that about five million children in four states across the North-East would receive immunisation.
Despite intensive disease surveillance efforts, attacks by Boko Haram have uprooted many people from villages and made polio tracking hard.
Polio results in irreversible paralysis in one in every 200 infections. It was once widespread in the continent, but there has not been a case in Africa for more than two years.
In February 2013, nine women administering polio vaccines to children in Nigeria were shot dead.
“Our overriding priority right now is to rapidly boost immunity in the affected areas to ensure that no more children are affected by this awful disease”, Mr. Adewole said.
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Isaac Adewole confirmed an outbreak of the polio virus in Borno State. Only two other countries are reporting polio: Pakistan and Afghanistan. The cases highlight the need for vaccination programs to reach remote areas of Nigeria, including the Lake Chad region, which borders Niger, Cameroon and Chad and has been the site of multiple Boko Haram attacks.
