Africa Press-Nigeria:
The Federal Government has said that although Nigeria’s polio-free status calls for celebration, however, more work still needs to be done to ensure that the status is maintained and that no child is ever paralysed by the virus.
The country has left the league of wild polio endemic countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, and will hopefully get its certification Africa Regional Certification Commission for Polio Eradication (ARCC), in August this year.
After three decades of tireless efforts to eradicate polio in the country, Nigeria has achieved the historical milestone of being wild polio-free.
Speaking during a zoom celebration meeting with stakeholders, the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib, on Friday in Abuja, said: “We have now arrived at the point where the ARCC has looked at all of the evidence that we have provided to the World Health Organization (WHO), and they have seen that there is no evidence whatsoever that there is still wild polio virus in circulation anywhere in the country.
“In the last few years, we have been able to pull together documentation that shows that we’ve looked everywhere and we’ve been able to provide enough vaccines to Nigerians and the wild polio viruses are no longer circulating.
“Wild polio-free certification means that there is no wild polio in Nigeria but it does not mean that the work is over. As a matter of fact, even the harder work starts because we have to maintain this wild polio-free status.
“We have to continue giving our kids the vaccinations that they need against wild polio viruses and vaccines against other vaccine-preventable diseases. We are also not forgetting that we still have Afghanistan and Pakistan that are endemic for wild polio viruses; that is, there is still a potential that this virus may be imported into Nigeria because we now live in a global village.
“The next stage is for a formal certificate to be awarded to Mr. President to say we are all cleared and then, we will now look at how we will pull all of the resources – material, human and all of the technical knowledge that we have garnered over the last three decades to now make sure not only do we finish the work of polio eradication but we are also able to harness all of the resources from polio eradication to make sure that we are clear of all vaccine-preventable diseases.
“All of the skills that we have been able to garner from the polio eradication programme is exactly what we used to eradicate Ebola in 2014. These are the same strategies that are being deployed to eradicate COVID-19.”
