A win for Africa

With no recorded cases since 2016, the African region has received certification as wild polio virus free by the World Health Organization (WHO) – and this is one of the greatest achievements in public health history.

Delivering polio vaccines to every child in the African region and wiping out the wild virus is no small feat, and the human resources, skills and experience gained in the process leave behind a legacy in how to tackle diseases and reach the poorest and most marginalised communities with lifesaving services.

Leadership from all levels of government across party lines, a historic public-private partnership which raised billions, millions of health workers reaching children across the region - from conflict zones to remote areas only accessible by motorbike or helicopter - and a culture of continual improvement were all critical to overcoming challenges and bottlenecks.

As countries work to suppress COVID-19, many of the same basic traditional public health methods used in polio eradication, including contact tracing and surveillance, are key to breaking the chains of transmission and saving lives and livelihoods from the first coronavirus pandemic in human history.

As recently as 2012, half of all globally recorded cases of wild polio virus were in Nigeria - the last country in the region to rid itself of the virus. However, as with the COVID-19 pandemic, the lesson is that it is never too late to turn a disease outbreak around. Through hard work, new innovations and ensuring that no child was missed, Nigeria and the entire African region have now defeated polio.

Across the region, health workers go village to village and door to door vaccinating children multiple times and offering health advice and support to the community. It is a remarkable effort started by Rotary International, which in the 1980s - when there were hundreds of thousands of cases every year - made a global call for eradication.

The unique public-private partnership was spearheaded by governments from across the world that politically and financially backed the effort, as well as a host of partners including Rotary International, WHO, the United Nations Children's Fund, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

There is a very good reason why the world's best scientists are racing to find a vaccine for COVID-19. Bringing polio to the brink of eradication was only possible because of safe and effective vaccines that were developed jointly by the United States and the USSR at the height of the Cold War.

Putting the common interest of humanity before nationalistic endeavours was a worthy act that paid off not only for the US and the USSR, but for the whole world.

Excerpted from: ‘Why Africa's success in eradicating polio is important today’