“We are now looking ahead to our next challenge which is to sustain the momentum on an emergency footing until 2017, with strong government oversight and continued levels of funding, so that Nigeria can hit the three-year mark with no cases, and finally eradicate this crippling disease”.
Advertisement
Nadda said that more than 100 vaccination posts are functioning along the global borders of India with Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan to administer oral polio vaccine drops throughout the year to all children below five years entering India.
He said that the reported suspected polio cases across the country are subsequently discarded as Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis (NPAFP) cases based on symptoms and stool results.
In 2012, Nigeria still seemed to be losing the battle against polio, recording more than half of all the world’s cases.
The last case of polio in the country was reported exactly a year today in a 16 months old boy from Sumaila Local Government Area in Kano State. “Secondly, we intend to strengthen routine immunization as well as our surveillance system so that if there is any case of poliomyelitis anywhere in the country, we’ll be able to pick it up”.
The programme on polio eradication commenced actively in Nigeria in 1998.
“This progress is thanks to the hard work of the Nigerian government, partners, religious and community leaders, and health workers”.
However health professionals and campaigners said the fight is not over and warned about complacency, with another 2 years to go before polio-free status is achieved.
“At the same time, efforts are ongoing to rapidly stop a cVDPV2 outbreak affecting the country, with aggressive outbreak response using trivalent OPV being implemented in the affected and high-risk areas”.
Nigeria marked its first year without a single case of polio on Friday, reaching a milestone many experts had thought would elude it as internal conflict hampered the battle against the disease.
In a press statement made available to LEADERSHIP yesterday in Abuja, the executive director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Ado Mohammed, said that if all pending laboratory investigations return negative in the next few weeks, Nigeria will officially be taken off the list of polio-endemic countries.
That will leave only Pakistan and Afghanistan on the endemic list. And it would be only the third time humankind had successfully eradicated a contagious disease (after smallpox and rinderpest)-a huge achievement.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, in northern Nigeria, religious extremists led a mass boycott of polio vaccination in 2003.
