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Nigeria: Deadline for Polio Eradication

29 June 2009

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editorial

Lagos — The recent stipulation by the Federal Government of December 2009 as deadline for the eradication of Poliomyelitis (polio) throughout the country is indeed a bold step towards putting a definite end to the dreaded child-killer disease. With the deadline, it appears the government has finally found a way round the factors that have for long rubbished its efforts at making the country polio-free like most other nations of the world.

A highly infectious disease caused by a virus known as poliovirus invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. Although it can strike at any age, it mainly affects children under the age of five and it is contracted through contaminated water. Poliovirus can travel from village to village and country to country, through un-immunized children.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative launched in 1988, yielded substantial results and by late 2003, polio had been eliminated from most countries except Nigeria and five others. Even then, while the other five countries have since attained polio-free status, Nigeria largely remains an endemic country due mainly to refusal in some parts of the country to take the highly efficacious anti-polio vaccines.

It is, however, cheering to note an encouraging change of attitude among hitherto vaccine-refusing communities, especially in northern Nigeria, a development that had led to a drastic reduction in the number of Wild Polio Virus (WPV) recorded cases from 799 in 2008 to 353 this year. This substantial progress must have encouraged the government to set the December 2009 deadline for the complete eradication of polio in the country.

But mere wishful thinking or ambitious target - setting cannot eradicate an epidemic as serious and as stubborn as polio. It requires concerted efforts by both the government and the citizens. While the government, on its part, needs a strong political will to pull the programme through, the citizens should be more open in embracing the on-going anti-polio campaigns. These are necessary not only to achieve the December deadline for polio eradication but also to avoid any likely regression.

Efforts must be intensified to reach children in every locality, no matter how remote because hundred per cent coverage is the irreducible minimum target if we are serious about polio eradication. This is because if a single case of polio exists anywhere, children everywhere are at risk! So, every nook and cranny of the country must be covered.

This, therefore, calls for the involvement of everybody: the president, governors, traditional rulers, local religious leaders, the media, health workers, conventional and quranic school teachers, churches, mosques and, most importantly, parents.

We call on political leaders, especially state governors, local government chairmen and even councillors to adopt more effective, even if less orthodox, mobilization strategies similar to the ones they adopt while canvassing for votes to penetrate even the remotest of villages. In this regard, they may want to introduce some form of incentives to encourage otherwise recalcitrant or misinformed parents to bring out their wards for immunization.

Apart from this, the government should also strengthen routine immunization exercises as the best preventive measure against the viral infection. Surveillance efforts should also be intensified to make for prompt detection and immediate response to poliovirus outbreak. If all these are in place, then we could begin to sigh with relief that the dreaded child-killer may be on its way out of our shores.

We, however, hasten to add that if government's optimism on ridding the nation of polio by December is merely based on the progress it has made in breaking down the wall of vaccine refusals, it may as well be living in a fool's paradise. For, there is more to the disease than just the refusal to be immunized.

If the fundamental factor that makes the country a fertile ground for the growth and dissemination of the virus is left untackled, it may as well be a matter of time before fresh outbreak is witnessed even after total eradication might have been achieved. Therefore, since poliovirus is mainly contracted through contaminated water, the government must make the provision of clean water for all Nigerians a top priority.

This is another reason to reiterate that the right to clean, potable water by all Nigerians should not be compromised for any reason.

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