AMN /
Today is World Polio Day. Those who are trying to rid Earth of the virus say it is time to step up vaccination campaigns, said Rotary’s Carol Pandak, Director of the Polio Plus programme. If this happens, we could have a Polio free world by 2019. Three years ago, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, was the reservoir of more than half of the Polio cases in the world.
This year, the World Health Organization removed Nigeria from the list of Polio endemic countries. Not having Polio in Africa for 12 months is truly a great achievement, said Dr. Elias Durry, an emergency adviser for Polio eradication at WHO. When the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched in 1988, the wild poliovirus existed in 125 countries. Now, it exists in two countries Pakistan and Afghanistan.