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- The independent Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) for Polio Eradication officially declared on Tuesday that Africa is free of wild poliovirus.
- This marks the eradication of the second virus from the face of the continent since smallpox 40 years ago.
- The Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) is a 16-person board appointed by the World Health Organization regional director for Africa in 1998.
- The group was tasked with overseeing the eradication of the wild poliovirus from the African continent.
What is polio and has it now been eradicated in Africa?
- Polio is a virus which spreads from person to person, usually through contaminated water. It can lead to paralysis by attacking the nervous system.
- Two out of three strains of wild polio virus have been eradicated worldwide.
- On Tuesday, Africa has been declared free of the last remaining strain of wild poliovirus.
- More than 95% of Africa’s population has nowbeen immunised.
- This was one of the conditions that the Africa Regional Certification Commission set before declaring the continent free from wild polio.
- Now only the vaccine-derived polio virus remains in Africa with 177 cases being identified this year.
What is vaccine-derived polio?
- Oral polio vaccine (OPV) contains an attenuated (weakened) vaccine-virus, activating an immune response in the body.
- When a child is immunized with OPV, the weakened vaccine-virus replicates in the intestine for a limited period, thereby developing immunity by building up antibodies.
How did Africa eliminate wild polio?
- Without a cure a vaccine developed in 1952 by Dr Jonas Salk gave hope that children could be protected from the disease.
- In 1961, Albert Sabin pioneered the oral polio vaccine which has been used in most national immunisation programmes around the world.
- In 1996 poliovirus paralysed more than 75,000 children across the continent – every country was affected.
- That year Nelson Mandela launched the “Kick Polio Out of Africa” programme, mobilising millions of health workers who went village-to-village to hand-deliver vaccines.
Challenges for Africa
- The last communities at risk of polio live in some of the most complicated places to deliver immunisation campaigns.
- Nigeria is the last country in Africa to have reported a case of wild polio – in Borno state in Nigeria’s remote north-east, and the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurrection, in 2016.
- Outside Nigeria, the last place to have seen a case of polio was in Somalia in 2014.
- Conflict with the Islamist militant group Boko Haram has made parts of Nigeria particularly difficult to reach.
- More than two million people have been displaced by the fighting.
- Frontline workers, 95% of whom were women, managed to navigate areas of conflict like Lake Chad by boat and deliver vaccines to remote communities.
How serious is polio?
- Polio mainly affects children aged under five.
- It also invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.
- Among those paralysed, 5% to 10% of people die when their breathing muscles become immobilised.
Could wild polio return?
- Polio can be easily imported into a country that is polio free and from there it can spread rapidly among under-immunised populations.
- This happened in Angola, which despite decades of civil war, defeated polio in 2001.
- The country remained free from polio for four years until 2005 when a number of cases were thought to have been brought in from outside the country.
- The WHO says that it is important countries remain vigilant and avoid complacency until there is global eradication.
- For all types of polio to be eliminated, including vaccine-derived polio, vaccination efforts will need to continue alongside surveillance, to protect children from being paralysed by the disease in the future.
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