The district governor of Rotary International in District 9125, Rtn Sagab Ahmed Sani, has said Nigeria should be optimistic and hopeful that an end to polio is in sight.
Ahmed said Rotary International aimed to see a polio-free world with the efforts that began in the early 1980s in 200 endemic countries.
He stated this during an 8-kilometre walk/road show to celebrate the day.
According to him, with Rotary's Polio Eradication Initiative's house-to-house campaign, a lot of ground has been covered in the endemic countries, except in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He said, "A lot has really been achieved. We are saying now that 99.99 per cent of polio has been eradicated around the world. Even in those two countries, we can see that polio is at the end."
"The government is heavily involved in the efforts. Governments of countries that have taken on the Polio Eradication Initiative that Rotary initiated and the government of Nigeria particularly has been doing well because all the main relevant government agencies have identified with it and the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) is doing all it can to ensure that polio is eradicated," he noted.
On the state of preparedness of the Rotary International District 9125 in tackling the vaccine-derived virus noticed in some parts of the country, he said it was a trend that is always observed towards the end of eradication of a virus, saying, "That is what we are seeing now and that is actually passing the message that we are in the very near future polio will be eradicated."
On his part, the chairman, Nigerian National Polio Plus Committee, Rotary International, Joshua Hassan, said the World Polio Day is a day set aside to celebrate those who worked tirelessly and have donated so much to make sure that they end polio in the world.
The president of the Rotary Club, Abuja, Maitama, who is also the president of all the Rotary presidents in the Federal Capital Territory, Ijeoma Agwu said, "The celebration began on the 24th of this month and we have been carrying out immunisation since Wednesday in our various adopted communities. Rotary used to adopt communities, so, we have gone into the communities, deep in the rural communities of Abuja and the metropolis as well."
