Although the world is now 99.9 per cent free of polio, the disease persists in some places. It can still paralyze and even kill those who contract it, usually children.
This month, the world marks historic progress in global public health, just one year after India and all of Southeast Asia were declared polio-free.
It has been one year since the last case of polio was detected in Nigeria. That's the longest the country and the African continent has ever gone without a case of polio, and it's a critical step on the path toward a polio-free Africa. If the World Health Organization removes Nigeria from its list of polio-endemic countries, which may happen later this year, only two will remain: Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Experts caution that the next two years will be critical to ensuring that Nigeria remains on track to achieve polio-free status. The support of donors, governments, and partners like Rotary is needed more than ever to maintain high-quality polio campaigns in Nigeria, particularly in remote and underserved areas, and to prevent the disease's return.
The people of Kano State, in northern Nigeria, have celebrated before in false hope. Initial signs that Kano had overcome polio were countered by new outbreaks. In 2010 and 2012 the incidence of polio in the state doubled. Yet today, people in Kano and all over Africa can take pride in the progress made toward eliminating an affliction that struck 12,631 on the continent in 2004 and paralyzed 1,000 people in Nigeria in 2006.
These outbreaks are a reminder that until polio is eliminated everywhere, it can return.
Over the last 30 years, Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative have made remarkable progress toward a polio-free world, and more than 13 million people, mainly in the developing world, who would otherwise have been paralyzed, are walking because they have been immunized against polio.
Rotary, the world's largest humanitarian service organization, was well equipped to take on this challenge when it launched its PolioPlus program in 1985. Rotary's thousands of volunteers directed grassroots projects to advocate for immunization, educate religious and community leaders about its benefits, and raise awareness of polio using local languages. They put their business acumen to work to maximize the impact of seed money and grants. PolioPlus has also implemented creative solutions to the challenges it faced in Nigeria, installing vaccination posts on the perimeter of destabilized areas to target transient populations.
Rotarians, including the members of the three clubs in Prince George, have donated $688.5 million to fight polio throughout Africa, including more than $200 million that's been directed to Nigeria. Rotary's PolioPlus program has yielded dividends beyond reducing cases of polio. The polio immunization infrastructure it helped establish in Nigeria was used to end the 2014 Ebola outbreak there swiftly.
Polio vaccination has also been combined with other critical health care interventions, like measles vaccination, distribution of malaria nets, administration of more than a billion doses of vitamin A and nutrition programs. The lessons learned from eradication efforts can be used to take on other health challenges, such as HIV and high maternal mortality.
Nigeria's success also proves that decisive public health interventions are possible despite ongoing instability in parts of the country. Like Nigeria, the two remaining polio-endemic countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, have faced security threats that provided challenges to polio eradication. However, Pakistan - which accounted for nearly 90 per cent of the world's polio cases in 2014 - has likewise made progress recently. As of June, the country had reported a reduction of nearly 70 per cent in the number of cases thus far in 2015 compared with the same period last year. If the world's commitment to polio eradication remains strong, we can be cautiously optimistic that we will soon have a polio-free world.
Through a matching program with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, every dollar donated to The Rotary Foundation at www.rotary.org for polio eradication (up to $35 million per year) will be tripled.
With your support, we can end polio now.
-- Rotary International
