The Nation Newspaper

Tag: polio

  • WHO removes Nigeria from polio-endemic list

    WHO removes Nigeria from polio-endemic list

    … Pakistan and Afghanistan remain on list

    The World Health Organization on Saturday removed Nigeria  from the polio-endemic list.

    With this development, Nigeria, which in 2012, accounted for more than half of all polio cases worldwide, has recorded a major breakthrough in its fight against polio.

    The country last  reported a case of wild poliovirus in July 24, 2014, and a full 12 months have passed without a fresh case of the paralysing disease.

    Only two countries – Pakistan and Afghanistan are still on the polio-endemic list and WHO has assured it will support their efforts to join list of nations that had been declared free of the disease.

    “This success is the result of a concerted effort by all levels of government, civil society, religious leaders and tens of thousands of dedicated health workers. More than 200,000 volunteers across the country repeatedly immunized more than 45 million children under the age of five years, to ensure that no child would suffer from this paralysing disease.

    “Innovative approaches, such as increased community involvement and the establishment of Emergency Operations Centres at the national and state level, have also been pivotal to Nigeria’s success.

    “The interruption of wild poliovirus transmission in Nigeria would have been impossible without the support and commitment of donors and development partners. Their continued support, along with continued domestic funding from Nigeria, will be essential to keep Nigeria and the entire region polio-free,” the WHO said in a statement on Saturday.

    The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), the public-private partnership leading the effort to eradicate polio, described Nigeria’s removal from the polio-endemic list as a “historic achievement” in global health.

    The Director-General of WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan, in a statement urged the Nigerian government to continue with the efforts that got the country off the polio-endemic list.

    Dr. Chan, who is also a member of GPEI, canvassed support for Pakistan and Afghanistan in their efforts to join the polio free world.

    “The outstanding commitment and efforts that got Nigeria off the endemic list must continue, to keep Africa polio-free. We must now support the efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan so they soon join the polio-free world,” she stated.

    The Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Ado Muhammad, who also spoke on the development, said, “We Nigerians are proud today. With local innovation and national persistence, we have beaten polio. We know our vigilance and efforts must continue in order to keep Nigeria polio-free.”

     

     

  • Buhari administers polio vaccines on children in Daura

    Buhari administers polio vaccines on children in Daura

    President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday administered Oral Polio Vaccines (OPV) on some children in his country home, Daura, Katsina State.

    The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the event which took place at the residence of the president, was part of the campaign to wipe out the virus from the country by 2017.

    NAN reports that the president who did not make any comment during the exercise, was assisted by Katsina State Gov. Aminu Masari and the Permanent Secretary, State Ministry of Health, Dr Ahmad Qabasiyyu.

    Masari and the Emir of Daura, Alhaji Umar Farouq also administered the polio vaccines on some of the children.

    In remarks, Masari said that the state had not recorded a single case of polio infection in the past three years.

    He expressed his administration’s determination to intensify efforts towards eradicating the virus from the state by 2017.

    The governor urged parents to continue to present their children for the routine polio immunisation in their respective areas.

    The state Coordinator, World Health Oganisation (WHO), Alh. Ali Yuguda, said that the fight against polio was recording tremendous success globally.

    He disclosed that only 37 polio cases were so far reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan this year.

    Yuguda urged parents to continue to present their children for the immunisation in order to wipe out the virus completely from the country by 2017.

    He reiterated the readiness of WHO to continue to support Nigeria to be polio free by 2017.

  • Photo : Buhari at polio eradication meeting

    Photo : Buhari at polio eradication meeting

    Chief of Staff to the President Mallam Abba Kyari, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Health Linus Awute, President Muhammadu Buhari,Executive Secretary Primary Health Care Development Dr.Ado Mohammed and the Emir of Argungu Alhaji Isma’ila Mohammadu Mera after their meeting on Polio Eradication in the Country at the State House Abuja yesterday.
    Chief of Staff to the President Mallam Abba Kyari, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Health Linus Awute, President Muhammadu Buhari,Executive Secretary Primary Health Care Development Dr.Ado Mohammed and the Emir of Argungu Alhaji Isma’ila Mohammadu Mera after their meeting on Polio Eradication in the Country at the State House Abuja yesterday.

  • Africa’s great Polio legacy

    In 1995, polio affected all countries across Africa and paralysed more than 75,000 children for life. The following year, Nelson Mandela launched a new campaign: ‘Kick Polio Out of Africa.’ His hope was that polio would follow the only human disease ever consigned to the history books: smallpox. Today we are one step closer to achieving that goal.

    Today August 11, for the first time in history, thewhole of Africa reached one year without a single case of wild poliovirus being confirmed. Just three years ago, Nigeria was home to more than half of all global cases of wild poliovirus, and outbreaks in the Horn of Africa and central Africa in 2013 made some question the feasibility of global eradication.

    ‘Health workers have been the true heroes of Africa’s polio programme. Daily, they overcome conflict, trek through marshlands to reach remote villages and build trust with communities to ensure that all children receive lifesaving polio vaccines.Community ownership and social mobilization have also been vital. Across Africa, we need to invest in and empower health workers,making sure they have the training, skills and incentives to continue delivering for our communities’

    Nigeria is the only remaining country in Africa still on the polio endemic list. However, there hasn’t been a recorded case since July 2014. Last month, President Muhammadu Buhari committed to ending polio in Nigeria and sent a powerful message across the country by vaccinating his own granddaughter. Once all the lab samples for the past year have been checked and surveillance standards are fully satisfied –Nigeria could be removedfrom the polio-endemic list.

    Africa now stands on the brink of being polio-free. Our collective efforts to combat polio have left behind important lessons that we must build upon to ensure that no child dies from vaccine-preventable diseases.

    First, government leadership at all levels is critical to success. Leaders across Africa prioritised and resourced the fight against polio. We now have a blueprint to tackle other health and developmental challenges. To protect the health and improve the lives of our citizens across the region, it is crucial for African leaders to deliver on the 2001 Abuja Declaration commitment to spend 15 percent of national budgets on public health.

    Innovation is also crucial. In Nigeria, major investment in seven Emergency Operations Centres and a strengthened surveillance system enabled early identification of new cases and enabled a quicker response. The infrastructure set up for polio proved invaluable when Nigeria was confronted with an incipient Ebola threat and was able to quickly snuff it out in its largest city, Lagos.

    ‘The polio campaign in Africa has shown us that when we invest in health systems, strong leadership, health workers and vaccines, overcoming even the most difficult health challenge is achievable. A year with no new confirmed cases of wild polio in Africa is a step in the right direction for the entire continent – and certainly a cause for celebration’

    Health workers have been the true heroes of Africa’s polio programme. Daily, they overcome conflict, trek through marshlands to reach remote villages and build trust with communities to ensure that all children receive lifesaving polio vaccines.Community ownership and social mobilization have also been vital. Across Africa, we need to invest in and empower health workers,making sure they have the training, skills and incentives to continue delivering for our communities.

    Another model of success has been theunique public-private partnership that has driven progress against polio. Working with governments across Africa and around the world, Rotary International, the World Health Organization, Unicef, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have helped generate public, political and financial support for polio eradication.

    Final and lasting success of the polio campaign in Nigeria and across Africa willnot be possible without life-saving vaccines. With the eradication of polio closer than ever before, leaders must commit to financing polio eradication, strengthening surveillance and improving routine immunisation performance. The first-ever Continental Ministerial Conference on Immunisation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this November will call upon every African health minister to ensure that lifesaving vaccines – against polio and other preventable diseases – reach all children.

    The polio campaign in Africa has shown us that when we invest in health systems, strong leadership, health workers and vaccines, overcoming even the most difficult health challenge is achievable. A year with no new confirmed cases of wild polio in Africa is a step in the right direction for the entire continent – and certainly a cause for celebration. However, we cannot become complacent. Now is the time for us to redouble our efforts.

    We have an unprecedented opportunity to make good on Mandela’s vision and create not only a polio-free Africa, but also an Africa where children survive and communities thrive. Let’s do it together.

     

    • Dr. Matshidiso Moeti is the World Health Organization’s Regional Director for Africa.

  • Our Girls; Hurray: Malaria vaccine & No polio; INEC Voter Register as Police ID Database ?

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15th 2014. The President is talking ‘dialogue’ with Boko Haram using perhaps the Sultan, the Emir of Kano and Conflict Resolution experts like Professor Albert. It must be difficult for the President, or Nigerians to contemplate negotiation with malignant evil. Who dare sit with people who may personally have sent suicide bomber children or who may blow the negotiation table up at the opening ceremony or a celebrated ‘Peace at last Federal –Boko Haram Agreement?

    July 2015 is ‘Wow’! Our Maternal Mortality Rate is 600+/100,000. Shame on African media for neglecting the ignorant citizen’s need for ‘LIFE SKILL’ knowledge and not doing more non-commercial 15 -30sec adverts for medical and social ignorance elimination! Shame on African governments for tiny health budgets! A million ‘hurrays’ for Nigeria’s  ‘ONE YEAR WITHOUT POLIO’ thanks to Rotary International, WHO, UNICEF and local partners and the vicious murder of polio vaccine health workers. Five million ‘hurrays’ for the new GSK MALARIA VACCINE to end malaria in childhood with funds from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others WHILE AFRICA’S LEADERS STOLE 50% OF THE BUDGET and under-budgeted health. Africa countries, except South Africa, offered about zero ‘Medical Research Grants’ in Nigeria’s and Africa’s Budgets.

    Over the last 30 years, Nigeria has made several very expensive, multibillion naira, and corruption riddled, attempts at getting Nigerians onto database.  I personally have been forced into five or six databases. Any more? The Nigeria Police Service or Force has no access to or has not asked for or has no interest in using any or all existing databases as a template for a NIGERIA NATIONAL FINGER AND FACE PRINT DATABASE IN 2015. Yet it is over 120 years after fingerprints were identified as an essential tool for crime investigations and made famous by fictional characters such as the literary private detective invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle –‘Sheer Luck’ Holmes, I mean Sherlock Holmes. Since 1892 when the first case was prosecuted, our Nigerian Police ignore and disregard obvious fingerprints and foot prints at ‘the scene of crime’. The Nigeria Police does not even set up a standard Crime Scene Protocol cordon and photography as seen in every international crime film. Nigerians, from watching CIS, NCIS etcetera, know what a normal Crime Laboratory or Forensic Lab looks like in sophisticated scientific content, delivery of spectacular clues and interpretation by genius police laboratory technicians. These are neglected jobs for hundreds of graduates. No matter how far-fetched, the cases depicted in these films ‘based on real life criminality’ appear to be, the science is real and operational in other countries. Why are victims of crime denied such rights to scientific investigation in Nigeria? Finger prints and face prints, photographs, are not nuclear physics. They are the simple applications of basic science and the use of widely available cameras, even phone cameras and are the right of victims and their families to justice.

    The largest database of adult Nigerians is not in the Passport Offices or FRSC Drivers Licence Records or BVN or State ID or National ID or the cell phone database or whatever other ID that has been cooked up in order to perpetrate the fraudulent extraction of funds. The largest, most expensive, recent and probably the most authentic database is the INEC database. This can be upgraded and modified by compulsory reporting of deaths and routine crosschecking. Even double registration does not matter.

    The Presidency and/or the ‘changed’ National Assembly (NASS), if it changes, must initiate ‘ID DATABASE LAWS’ authorising and mandating the Police, EFCC and ICPC full access to state, Federal Finger/Face ID databases on routine request and corporate employees databases on a judge’s warrant authorisation. Of course there is some access by police to the massive cell phone database already. The police must not continue the apparent collaboration with crime by sabotaging or underutilising this available database. Building immediately on this requires a ‘change’ instruction to all Police formations and Police stations that ALL SUSPECTS MUST BE IDed PROPERLY WITH FINGERPRINTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, FRONT VIEW AND SIDE VIEW-THE MUG SHOT- AND ANY MARKS OR TATTOOS NOTED. Even the ear is a print. With a simple laptop computer or a photo camera, available from any big cell phone company, this information can be recorded and forwarded by internet, email or even WhatsApp or Instagram to a new Nigerian language password cyber-secure state, REGIONAL AND FEDERAL POLICE ID DATABASE run by serial teams of NYSC wiz-kids and cross-referenced with the INEC database and others as needed.

    The facilities to bring the Nigeria Police into 2015 already exist. We only need to harvest, harness and direct them to reach Nigeria’s ‘change’ policing goals.

    We can create a Police database and add a FOOT SECTION as many African thieves operate barefoot. It only requires the will of the Police itself to grow and ‘change’. There are today high enough quality phone cameras in the possession of every DPO in every single police station. Let them initiate the needed ‘change’. The Federal Government can get a database designed by patriotic Nigerians in IT in a week. In the unlikely event that it is not satisfactory, ‘for security reasons’, Nigeria can mistakenly spend good scarce foreign exchange on free Open Source or expensive Microsoft and other ‘secure’ Police packages or use any internationally acceptable existing Police format for interchanges from UK’s CID, INTERPOL, America’s FBI, the New York’s ‘Finest’ or EUROPOL.

    ‘ We can create a Police database and add a FOOT SECTION as many African thieves operate barefoot. It only requires the will of the Police itself to grow and ‘change’. There are today high enough quality phone cameras in the possession of every DPO in every single police station. Let them initiate the needed ‘change’’

  • We will deploy all resources to keep polio out of Nigeria, Says Buhari

    President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday declared that his government will do all within its powers to ensure that no Nigerian child is ever infected with polio again.

    He spoke at a brief event in the Presidential Villa, Abuja to mark Nigeria’s successful completion of one year without any reported case of the wild polio virus.

    Buhari, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, pledged that the Federal Government will mobilize and deploy all necessary resources to efficiently complete the task of eradicating polio from the country.

    He said: “Today, 25th of July, 2015, Nigeria has successfully completed one year without any case reported of the wild polio virus.

    “Achieving this feat has placed us firmly on the path to eradicating this paralyzing disease from our land.

    “I seize this opportunity to call on Governors, our traditional and religious leaders, the private sector and our mothers and fathers to redouble their efforts to ensure that every child and every new born baby is vaccinated with the polio vaccine and other life saving routine vaccines,” President Buhari said.

    The President personally vaccinated one of his grandchildren against polio at the occasion to demonstrate his commitment to eradicating the virus from Nigeria as well as the safety and efficacy of the polio vaccine.

    He thanked all Nigerians and foreign partners who have support the country’s polio eradication programme in several ways.

    The President said that he looked forward to the formal declaration of Nigeria as a polio-free country in 2017.

  • Nigeria marks polio-free year

    Nigeria marked its first year without a single case of polio on Friday, reaching a milestone many experts had thought would elude it as internal conflict hampered the battle against the crippling disease.

    It means the country could come off the list of countries where polio is endemic in a few weeks, once the World Health Organization (WHO) can confirm that the last few samples taken from people in previously affected areas are free of the virus, Reuters says.

    This achievement turns up the pressure on Pakistan, where most of the few polio cases in the world remain, to follow suit.

    Nigeria’s polio-free period, dating from July 24, 2014, is the longest it has gone without recording a case.

    The hope is that next month the entire African continent will have gone a full year without a polio infection, with the last case recorded in Somalia on August 11, 2014.

    All this brings tantalisingly closer the prospect that polio will soon become only the second human infectious disease after smallpox to be eradicated.

    “It’s an extraordinary achievement. It really shows the value of government leadership and taking ownership of the programme,” said Carol Pandak, the director of Rotary International’s polio program.

     

  • Ondo reaffirms commitment to tackle polio

    Ondo reaffirms commitment to tackle polio

    The Ondo State government has reaffirmed its commitment to routine immunisation exercise for mothers and children in order to eradicate killer diseases in the state.

    The state Deputy Governor, Alhaji Lasisi Oluboyo who disclosed this, said the government would continue to partner with health organisations and other relevant stakeholders towards eradicating polio in the state and the country in general.

    Oluboyo, who represented the governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, during a meeting with members of the state task force on polio eradication at the governor’s office in Akure, the state capital, said the government has invested heavily in the health sector because of its importance and peculiarity.

    According to him, the present administration in the state would not relent in its efforts in the health sector, adding that the government would continue to work towards eradicating communicable and non-communicable diseases in the state.

    He commended the state Ministry of Health, health workers and their partners for their efforts at ensuring that polio is kicked out in the state, noting that the their commitment and dedication to this task has greatly contributed to the successes recorded in the health sector in the past few years.

    The governor further urged all stakeholders in health care delivery in the various local government areas in the state to continue to work and positively impact on polio eradication strategies at the grassroots level.

  • WHO to Nigeria: War against polio must not fail

    WHO to Nigeria: War against polio must not fail

    The Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, has charged Nigeria not to relent in the efforts to rid the country of polio disease.

    Chan, who spoke at the opening of the 68th Session of the World Health Assembly, on Monday in Geneva, Switzerland, maintained that overcoming the polio virus disease “is one initiative that must not fail.”

    The WHO chief, according to a statement signed by Mrs. Ayo Adesugba, Director Press and Public Relations, Ministry of Health, also commended the country for its ongoing efforts, which has ensured that no new cases had been reported in the last nine months.

    The statement reads: “The WHO Director General observed that in the past nine months Nigeria has not had any reported case of the disease and according to her, the situation in Nigeria looks extremely encouraging.”

    “She further stated that overcoming the polio virus disease is one initiative that must not fail. Dr. Chan pointed out that Afghanistan and Pakistan have both made great strides despite severe challenges.

    “Nigeria’s recognition by the WHO boss comes as a result of its aggressive response in tackling the polio virus. Its efforts have yielded success  as no case of the disease has been reported in the southern part of the country for five years and with the exception of some cases in Kano and Yobe States, no polio virus infection has been reported in the past two years in the Northern states.

    “The nation has strengthened surveillance and routine immunization, embarking on house-to-house campaigns to ensure that all eligible children receive the life-saving Polio vaccine. If Nigeria’s efforts are sustained, by July 2015, the country will be removed from the list of polio endemic countries by the World Health Organization. ”

     

     

     

  • Polio: World Bank approves $200m

    The Board of Executive Directors, World Bank Group, has approved $200 million to support polio eradication and immunisation of children under five in Nigeria.

    Mr Oluwole Odutolu, who heads the bank’s Task Team for Polio Eradication Support Project, made this known in a statement in Abuja on Monday.

    Odutolu said the fund, sourced from the International Development Association (IDA), was additional financing for the final push to eradicate polio in Nigeria.

    He said the effort was also aimed at sustaining routine immunisation for children and women of reproductive age, adding that the programme was approved on Friday in Washington D.C., US.

    “Eradicating polio is a global public good because of its epidemic potential and devastating impact on children and adults. Polio remains a preventable lethal and crippling disease and ending it makes the world a safer place for children,” he said.

    He said Nigeria was making progress towards polio eradication, with no new cases of the polio virus reported since July 2014.

    According to him, the disease surveillance system, even in insecure areas, continues to perform well.

    “This additional financing will build on the positive results of the original project approved in July, 2012, and help to sustain the gains achieved to date.

    “This new financing for the Polio Eradication Support Project will assist Nigeria to increase and sustain the coverage of oral polio vaccine immunisation.