Last week, just as Nigeria was set to mark a second year without a reported case of polio, the World Health Organization confirmed the discovery of two cases in the country’s northeast. In response, the Nigerian government announced that $27.9 million has been earmarked for “polio vaccines and other related activities.” As a part of the eradication drive, the government says it will immunize 56 million children by November.
The quick response from the government should be
reassuring to the WHO and its partner organizations working on the
global campaign to eradicate polio. Following the announcement of the
two new cases last week, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for
Africa, said “the overriding priority now is to rapidly immunize all
children around the affected area and ensure that no other children
succumb to this terrible disease.”
The return of polio is likely due to the general instability in Nigeria’s northeast, as Quartz has previously pointed out.
With terrorist sect Boko Haram controlling swathes of the area at
different times over the past two years, gaps have emerged in polio
surveillance and immunization. As a result, hundreds of thousands of
children are likely to have missed vaccine doses.
Isaac Adewole, Nigeria’s health minister, has
corroborated this theory. “The issue here has to do with access to this
population,” he said at a press briefing this week. “Reports from the
detailed investigation carried out by our team revealed that both cases
came from security compromised areas of Borno State, which have limited
access to any form of health services including immunization.”
Sign up for the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief — the most important and interesting news from across the continent, in your inbox.
0 comments:
Post a Comment