After 3 years without new cases, the World Health Organization dares to state that polio no longer exists in Africa. Correspondent Femke van Zeijl saw how Nigeria was the last country to ban polio in a clever way: “All praise.”
The fight against childhood paralysis in the West African country was accompanied by major setbacks, says Nigeria correspondent Femke van Zeijl: “The problem was that it persisted in the northeast where the terror group Boko Haram is causing unrest.”
Distrust
As a result, 200,000 children were not available for vaccination. Distrust against vaccination also played a role: “There were reports that it was actually a secret plot by the West to make Nigerians sterile.”
According to the journalist, this is not entirely illogical: “Western countries have experimented with medicines on the population in Nigeria in the past.”
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Vaccination campaign effective
Every effort was made to educate everyone about the importance of vaccinations. Van Zeijl: “The good news is that the NCDC, say the Nigerian RIVM, has acted enormously effectively.” Women in particular who took vaccines in the dangerous area managed to vaccinate about 1 million children in the Northeast in 2016, despite the presence of the terror organization.
Partly due to the enormous vaccination campaign of the Nigerian government, it has now been possible to get the entire continent free of polio. “That went both from above and below, from the people themselves.” President Buhari himself also helped in 2015, she saw: “He then vaccinated his grandchildren himself in front of the television cameras. To show that things are going well.”
New variant
95 percent of the African population is now immune to the contagious disease, the Africa Regional Certification Commission says. But it remains to be alert, says professor Marianne van der Sande of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp. It is a different vaccine than we have here.
“Unlike in the Netherlands, it is administered with droplets”, she explains. The vaccine has an effect in the intestines. “The weakened virus ensures that the children do not get sick, but it does build up their immune system. That means that it can contain that weakened virus in the stool.” She points out that even in times of COVID-19 attention must continue to be paid to vaccination against polio. “That is why it is important to keep vaccinating everyone. If there is not enough vaccination, which is unfortunately difficult in poorly accessible areas, the virus can make children sick again through the environment.”
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