Lagos (AFP)

The World Health Organization (WHO) is due to certify the African continent "free from wild poliovirus" on Tuesday, four years after the appearance of the last cases in northeastern Nigeria, a region devastated by a conflict against the Boko jihadists Haram.

"Thanks to the efforts of governments, healthcare workers and communities, more than 1.8 million children have been saved" from this disease, says the WHO in a statement released before this historic meeting, step crucial in the global eradication of this disease.

The official announcement, by videoconference from 3:00 p.m. GMT, will bring together the director general of the WHO, the Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, its regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, the Nigerian billionaires and philanthropists Aliko Dangote and the American Bill Gates.

"It's a tremendous victory, a deliverance," Dr Tunji Funsho, from the Polio Nigeria committee of the Rotary International association, told AFP.

"It's been more than 30 years since we launched this challenge. To say that I am happy is an understatement!", Rejoices this Nigerian doctor who has dedicated his life to this cause.

Caused by "wild poliovirus" (WPV), polio is an acute and contagious infectious disease that mainly affects children, attacks the spinal cord and can cause irreversible paralysis.

It was endemic all over the world, until the discovery of a vaccine in the 1950s. The richest countries quickly had access to it, but Asia and Africa remained for a long time important centers of infection.

In 1988, the WHO counted 350,000 cases worldwide and still more than 70,000 cases in Africa alone in 1996.

But thanks to a rare collective awareness and to significant financial efforts (19 billion dollars over 30 years), only two countries in the world today have contamination by the "wild poliovirus": Afghanistan (29 cases in 2020) and Pakistan (58 cases).

- Trust -

Epicenter of the disease in the world at the beginning of the 2000s, Nigeria, an African giant of 200 million inhabitants, was still very recently on their side.

In the Muslim North, under pressure from Salafist circles, polio vaccination campaigns stopped between 2003 and 2004, rumored to be the tool of a vast international plot to sterilize Muslims.

It took a lot of work with traditional and religious leaders to convince people to have their children vaccinated.

"People trust their leaders more than their politicians because we live with them," Grema Mundube, community leader in Monguno, a town in the far northeast of the country, told AFP. "We talked to them and vaccinated our own children, and over time they also accepted the vaccine."

However, in 2009 the emergence of the conflict against Boko Haram dampened hopes of having finally eradicated the disease: in 2016, four new cases of polio were recorded in Borno State (North-East), home of the disease. jihadist insurgency.

"At the time, around 400,000 children were beyond the reach of any medical campaign because of the violence," recalls Dr Funsho.

- "Children inaccessible" -

The security situation remains extremely volatile in northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa (Iswap) group control large areas, particularly around Lake Chad.

"But local authorities, humanitarian agencies and all partners have taken the bull by the horns to find solutions to reach these children," said Dr Musa Idowu Audu, WHO coordinator for Borno State.

In "partially accessible" areas, vaccination campaigns were carried out under the protection of the army and self-defense militias.

In areas totally controlled by jihadists, WHO and its partners have approached populations on roads or markets to build a network of "health informants" and "sentinels" that can alert cases or potential epidemics.

"We had to build a pact of trust with these populations, by providing them with free medical care for example," Dr Audu reports.

Today, it is estimated that only 30,000 children are still "inaccessible": a figure "too low" to ensure epidemic transmission, according to scientific experts.

Despite his "immense pride and joy", Dr Audu recalls that around twenty medical workers or volunteers have been killed in recent years in northeastern Nigeria for this cause.

Africa must now ensure that no case from Pakistan or Afghanistan will undermine this success and that a sufficient proportion of its children are immunized to ensure full immunization of the continent.

Until that day, Dr Funsho says he will "always only sleep with one eye".

© 2020 AFP