Here's what happens when one child is infected with poliovirus--200 other children catch the virus and each child excretes up to 3 million viral parts each day for up to 33 days.
Of course, there is no reason for every 200 children to be infected.
At least four doses of oral polio vaccine should keep them immune from the virus circulating round where they live.
Despite its high infectivity (one child infecting 200 other children), polio virus has a low virulence: it causes fewer deaths than malaria and causes fewer paralyses--though it is shockingly severe and complete in most cases.
It is one reason for noncompliance--caregivers disallowing vaccines for their children, saying the children don't die.
It is also why such refusal jeopardises any efforts to eradicate the virus.
Vaccinators have to deal with noncompliance, but increasingly, they are also taking the blame for not doing enough and showing reasonable commitment to combat it.
Some 40 independent monitors--only one cadre of staff involved in routine immunisation--were fired from national routine immunisation programme for poor performance.
Minister of state for health, Dr Muhammad Pate, said they were taken out of the programme, run by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency and other partners, "because they have been found not to be doing what they are supposed to do."
Their job is to sample fixed numbers of children in homes and outside homes and calculate what proportions are covered during immunisation rounds.
But it has been plagued with difficulties of taking and recording, prompting local officials to pick people in school-related work and health institutions to do the task and help out.
Their work is necessary to identify areas of persistent non-compliance, so that when it happens in the field, supervisors, community and ward heads can step in.
Supervisor Blessing Alozie encountered her strongest opposition in Sabon Garu ward in Hadejia council area of Jigawa State in the March immunization exercise when parents bluntly refused to allow vaccinators immunize their children.
The mothers eventually came around, after she pressed upon them what risks their children faced if he or she is left unimmunized.
Short of outright misrepresentation, some field workers have had fall back to convincing parents of present cases of poliovirus in their state.
"I told one woman that when her child gets sick, her husband will not be the one staying up at night or taking the child to hospital," she explains.
Alozie says husbands were more difficult to convince. A father she met wanted nothing to do with the vaccine initially, but hours of arguing in English wore the man down.
The man's refusal was habitual--he had consistently refused vaccines for his children but miraculously carved in March.
Some house heads complained of too many rounds, officials would later report when debriefed.
"Some gave no reason at all, and did not even want us to write anything on their wall [to indicate the home had been visited]," said one official. "They said they just didn't want anything."
In all, 45 cases of noncompliance were recorded in the area on the first day of immunisation in March--far more than projected for the entire Hadejia local government.
Officials called the number "unacceptable" and set to work, calling in community leaders and district heads to help resolve the cases.
When it emerged that community leaders and healthworkers were among those who refused vaccines, a team leader, Dr Mohammed Kainuwa, warned that the public couldn't take officials serious "if we are not serious about solving noncompliance."
Focus stayed on field workers to push for the change needed. Considering the scenario about one child infecting 200 more, Kainuwa warned that leaving any child unvaccinated was a waste of time and money.
In the past, refusal was been blamed on everything from suspicion about the free vaccine, to suspicion about intense health concern about polio, and tall tales about the vaccines ability to hinder or reduce fertility, in other cases when a handful of other diseases killed more people in health facilities compounded the issues .
Suspicion about polio vaccine being a means of cutting down fertility was rife, and religious messages hardened opposition to the virus.
But religious and community leaders have been leaned on to strive for the understanding of their followers.
The embarrassment for Nigeria is that countries with seemingly more problems--India, with a larger population and equally intense poverty, and Liberia, emerging from a civil war--have managed to stay free of polio.
In March, only 14 cases of polio were recorded in seven states, but the figure jumped to 23 by April. In April, Niger recorded its first cases in three years and Sokoto recorded two cases.
Without commitment of officials to deal with the problem, "we are not serious," says an official, pointing why the virus will take longer to eradicate.
"We have made polio a cow to be milked. We are wasting our children's time because of the things we are going to gain."
So, getting serious might be the test of a field worker. Says Kainuwa: "If a mother says no, you go back to the square and convince her" not return to report another case of non-compliance.
Vaccinators in Hadejia returned to Sabon Garu, and by the end of the four days of immunisation, all 45 children left out had taken polio vaccine drops.
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