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Africa has been officially declared a wild polio virus free area. The African Regional Certification Commission announced that more than 95 percent of the population had been vaccinated, with only the virus from vaccines remaining on the continent.
- Polio is, among others, causing paralysis, an infectious disease affecting mainly young children
- Currently, the African continent only has cases of mutant polio virus infections from vaccines
- Anti-vaccine fights and actions have slowed the eradication of the virus from Africa
What is polio?
Polio, poliomyelitis, or Heine-Medin disease (after the names of the two scientists who first described it) is an infectious viral disease that usually affects children under the age of five. It can even lead to death if the respiratory muscles are affected. 5 to 10 percent the sick die because of this.
Initial symptoms include fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, a stiff neck, and pain in the extremities. The disease can attack the nervous system, causing complete paralysis within hours. This is how one in 200 infections ends up.
The polio virus is usually transmitted from person to person through contaminated water. We don’t have a cure for polio, but the vaccine gives protection for life.
Two of the three wild-type polio virus strains found worldwide have now been eradicated, and we now only report cases of the disease in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
History of polio in Africa
As recently as a quarter of a century ago, polio hit thousands of children in Africa. Nigeria is the last African country to be declared wild polio virus free. Meanwhile, ten years ago, more than half of all registered cases in the world took place there.
Currently, only vaccine-derived virus exists in Africa. It is a rare form of the virus that has mutated from an oral vaccine and can spread in insufficiently immune communities. The World Health Organization has identified a number of such cases in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Angola. This year alone, there were 177 of them.
Wild polio virus has been eradicated in Africa
Virologist Dr. Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine in 1952. Dr. Albert Sabin, born in Białystok, was a pioneer of universal vaccination. In 1961, he began a worldwide campaign to administer the oral polio vaccine.
In 1996, Heine-Medin disease affected more than 75 thousand. African children. In the same year, Nelson Mandela launched a program propagated with the slogan “Get polio out of Africa”. Millions of health workers went from village to village delivering vaccines. So far, nearly a billion of them have been administered, preventing about 1,8 million infections.
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Vaccination against polio was reluctant
Nigeria is the last country in Africa to report a case of wild polio virus disease. It took place in 2016 in the state of Borno, located in the north-east of the country and plagued by fratricidal fights for years. The conflict with the Boko Haram group of Islamic militants made polio prevention very difficult in some parts of Nigeria, in particular in the state of Borno. As a result of the fighting, over two million people were displaced. On the other hand, health care workers, 95 percent of whom are women, they have been forced to navigate in conflict-affected areas (such as Lake Chad) only by boats.
The vaccine disinformation campaign has also slowed the efforts of medical services. In 2003, vaccination was suspended in the state of Kano and other states in northern Nigeria. This happened after statements by Muslim religious leaders that the vaccine contained a fertility-inhibiting agent. According to Muslims there, America was behind the vaccines, which aims to make local women sterile. The accusations were only refuted by laboratory tests conducted by Nigerian scientists.
Vaccination resumed a year later, but rumors continued. In 2013, nine polio vaccinated women died in Boko Haram shootings at Kano health centers. It took many years to clear up any suspicions about a vaccine.
Apart from Nigeria, Somalia (Puntland region) was the last country to experience polio in 2014.
Testimonies from polio survivors helped the vaccination campaign
The key to the success of the vaccination campaign was gaining the trust of local communities. Misbahu Lawan Didi, president of the Nigerian Polio Survivors Association, believes that it was mainly thanks to them that they managed to convince citizens to take vaccines.
“Lots of people see how hard we try to get them with the vaccine,” says Misbahu Lawan Didi, “we travel long distances to talk to them.” We ask if they want their children to look like us.
A huge coalition for vaccination has formed in Nigeria. It included polio survivors, religious leaders, teachers, parents, volunteers and healthcare professionals. They worked together, traveled together to the farthest corners of the country to vaccinate.
Will the polio virus come back to Africa?
The virus can easily be moved to a country that is already free from it. If this happens, it can spread rapidly among the insufficiently immune population. This was the case in Angola, which defeated polio in spite of the long civil war in 2001. The country was virus-free for four years, until 2005, when quite a few new cases of infection emerged. It was suspected that the wild virus had been brought in from abroad.
Until a global eradication of the disease occurs, the WHO advises to remain vigilant. Vaccinations should not be abandoned as the wild virus may start spreading again. Epidemiological surveillance will also be required to eradicate all types of polio, including vaccine-induced polio.
This may interest you:
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- Vaccinations for polio – you need to know this
- How Many People Avoid Death With Vaccines? These diseases took the most victims
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