Before this reemergence, Nigeria had not reported a polio case since July 24, 2014, the World Health Organisation said.
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A child in Nigeria receives a polio vaccine as part of an immunization drive in 2013.
Boko Haram militants based in Borno state have publicly denounced vaccination campaigns and prevented health workers from operating in the area.
It’s also a place where, at times, being a polio vaccine worker is risky.
This makes it impossible to immunise children in volatile areas. They report that in Borno both religious leaders and average residents accept the vaccine.
“This is not the first time that polio eradication efforts have experienced a setback”.
Under the directions of Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif a meeting was held in Islamabad on Friday to ensure all necessary measures for fully eradicating polio virus from the country.
The physician, who now works in the USA with Duke University’s Global Health Institute, said the Nigerian task force worked to establish trust with local leaders and parents who were wary of vaccinations.
Rotary International has led the eradication charge, along with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and, more recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In a statement, the Centers for Disease Control said, “Polio is a awful disease that no child should suffer”.
Wild polio virus was detected in one of them, living in the Gwoza district of Nigeria’s northeastern-most state, Borno.
Globally, eradication is painfully close. For now the priority is to rapidly immunize as numerous approximately 100,000 children in the affected area as possible, Zaffran told Quartz. The government has made significant strides to stop this paralysing disease in recent years. John Vertefeuille heads the CDC’s polio eradication program.
The Nigerian government has “moved into emergency outbreak response mode”, UNICEF spokesperson Priyanka Khanna said in a statement.
The World Health Organization had declared that the country no longer had endemic polio on September 25, 2015.
The new cases come on the two-year anniversary since the last confirmed case of polio was reported in Africa.
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As recently as 2012, Nigeria accounted for more than half of all the polio cases worldwide. There have only been 21 wild polio cases reported in 2016 so far, a drop from 34 cases reported past year. Until now, polio was only spreading in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where political instability and terrorism have severely damaged these countries health care systems.
