Polio is eradicated in Africa, says WHO

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The World Health Organization certified, this Tuesday, August 25, that the African continent was "free from wild poliovirus", four years after the appearance of the last cases in northeastern Nigeria, a region devastated by a conflict against the jihadists of Boko Haram.

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"  Thanks to the efforts of governments, health workers and communities, more than 1.8 million children have been saved  " from polio , the WHO said in a statement.

Caused by “  wild poliovirus  ” (WPV), polio is an acute 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 had rapid access to it, but Asia and Africa remained for a long time important centers of infection.

Nigeria, epicenter of the disease in the 2000s

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. 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 Born State, in the north-east of the country, hotbed of the jihadist insurgency.

Volatile security situation

The security situation remains extremely volatile in north-eastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa (Iswap) group control large areas, particularly around Lake Chad. 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 “  sentries  ” that can alert cases or potential epidemics.

In 1988, the WHO counted 35,000 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, with 29 cases in 2020, and Pakistan, with 58 cases recorded.

► To read also: Bill Gates allies with the greatest fortune in Africa to eradicate polio in Nigeria

(  With AFP  )

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