This is a revised and updated version of an editorial from Rotary International that first appeared in the Aug. 17, 2015 print edition of
The Citizen:
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.
Today is World Polio Day and the world's health community marks historic progress against a disease that once killed or crippled hundreds of thousands of children around the world since prehistoric times.
There were no cases of the wild virus of polio detected in Nigeria this year.
If that continues for another two months, it will be only the second time (it happened in 2015) that the entire 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, only two will remain: Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It takes three years for a country to be declared polio free so the work continues.
The support of donors, governments (the Canadian government is one of the largest per-captia contributors in the world), and partners like Rotary International and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is needed more than ever to maintain high-quality polio campaigns in Nigeria, particularly in remote and conflict-ridden areas, and to prevent the disease's 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 is known in Prince George for paying for soccer fields, children's parks and various other community improvements.
Globally, it is the world's largest humanitarian service organization and it boldly took on polio when it launched its PolioPlus program in 1985.
Rotarians, including the members of the three clubs in Prince George, have donated US $1.2 billion to fight polio throughout Africa. 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 last week, the country had reported just five wild polio virus cases, down from 20 last year and 306 in 2014.
If the world's commitment to polio eradication remains strong, we can be cautiously optimistic that we will soon have a polio-free world.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
