In 2003, Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s plan to immunize more than 15 million in West and Central Africa was stopped in its tracks when three states in northern Nigeria boycotted the vaccination. Including these two children who’ve been paralyzed in Nigeria there’ve been only 21 polio cases reported anywhere in the world this year.
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Miringa said the two children, aged under 2, were among refugees arrived from areas newly freed from Boko Haram.
Boko Haram militants based in Borno state have publicly denounced vaccination campaigns and prevented health workers from operating in the area. Now two children infected by polio are paralyzed for life.
Experts blamed gaps in polio surveillance but also instability in the region-potentially due to the presence of the terrorist group Boko Haram-which has restricted the movement of vaccination campaigns and displaced thousands of people.
Type One is endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
That was a time, less than a dozen years ago, when polio virus from Nigeria was spreading into other parts of Africa. And, as recently as in 2012, Nigeria accounted for over half of the world’s polio cases.
Nonetheless, officials said the new polio cases were discovered in areas that had recently become accessible. Some cases of polio are still caused by mutation of the weakened live virus used in vaccines, which is excreted and can be passed to other children.
The group has been known to kill health workers carrying out the vaccinations. “It is a reminder that we must redouble efforts to strengthen surveillance and immunization activities”, the agency said.
“Planning for a large-scale campaign is in place”, Khanna said.
It’s also a place where, at times, being a polio vaccine worker is risky.
The most fearful aspect of the virus is that it can be spread through person-to-person contact.
Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that mainly affects young children and can result in permanent paralysis, according to WHO. “The overriding priority now is to rapidly immunize all children around the affected area and ensure that no other children succumb to this awful disease”.
“It’s logistically very hard, but this is something that World Health Organization and programs [in Africa] have experience with”, he said, describing the outbreak as a temporary setback. “Over the past couple of decades, millions and millions and millions of children” have been vaccinated.
In a statement, the Centers for Disease Control said, “Polio is a bad disease that no child should suffer”.
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He said: “We can not deny the connection between conflict and the continued threat of polio”.
