On the heels of historic success against polio in Nigeria and across Africa, Rotary International on Monday announced an additional $6.9 million to the country to support immunisation activities and surveillance currently being spearheaded by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
This coincided with the World Health Organisation (WHO) removing Nigeria from the list of polio-endemic countries, leaving only Afghanistan and Pakistan.
With no case of wild poliovirus (WPV) reported since July 2014, more than a year has passed with no samples testing positive for WPV across the country.
This signifies the hard work of countless health care workers, traditional leaders, over 400,000 volunteers and the government, who managed to turn around the programme in Nigeria by repeatedly reaching over 45 million children with polio vaccines.
“As we celebrate world polio day in a time when we have been removed from the list of polio-endemic countries, we must remain vigilant and ensure that all children are immunised against polio until Nigeria is certified polio free and indeed the world is certified polio free,” said Tunji Funsho, chairman, Rotary’s Nigeria National Polio Plus Committee.
According to him, “no child is safe from the polio virus until no more polio virus exists on this planet.”
Rotary is contributing $26.8 million to African countries to ensure the disease never returns to the continent: Burkina Faso ($1.6m), Cameroon ($2.7m), Chad ($2.6m), Democratic Republic of Congo ($499,579), Equatorial Guinea ($685,000), Kenya ($750,102), Madagascar ($562,820), Mali ($1.5m), Niger ($3m), Nigeria ($6.9m), Somalia ($4.9m), and South Sudan ($1.5m).
Outside of Africa, Rotary also announced grants of $6.7 million for polio-endemic Pakistan, $400,000 to Iraq and $5.3 million to India. The remaining $990,542 will support immunisation activities and surveillance.
In total, Rotary has given $40.4 million to end polio worldwide.
Rotary provides grant funding to polio eradication initiative partners UNICEF and the WHO, which work with the governments and Rotary members in polio-affected and high-risk countries to plan and carry out immunisation activities.
To date, Rotary has contributed more than $1.5 billion to fight polio. Through 2018, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will match two-to-one every dollar Rotary commits to polio eradication (up to $35m a year).
Currently, there have been only 41 cases of polio reported in the world in 2015, down from about 350,000 a year when the initiative launched in 1988.
Polio is on track to become the second human disease ever to be eliminated from the world after smallpox.
To date, Rotary has helped 194 countries stop the transmission of polio through the mass immunisation of children.
Rotary’s new funding commitment targets countries where children remain at risk of contracting this incurable, but vaccine-preventable, disease.
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
