‘Polio eradication from the world has been a long journey’

Charles Wolf, vaccines Head for Africa at Sanofi Pasteur on Tuesday said the ambition to eradicate polio from the world has been a long journey.

Statistics show that wild poliovirus cases have decreased by over 99 percent since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases in more than 125 endemic countries then, to 33 reported cases in 2018. Of the three strains of wild poliovirus (type 1, type 2, and type 3), wild poliovirus type 2 was eradicated in 1999 and no case of wild poliovirus type 3 has been found since the last reported case in Nigeria in November 2012.

In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was launched by several stakeholders involved in global public health and led by the World Health Organization. At that time, polio was endemic in 125 countries with more than 350,000 children paralyzed each year. Since then, thanks to the strong collaborations across the GPEI, there has been a 99.9% decrease in paralytic cases.

Wolf said that the recent declaration by The independent Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC), certifying the WHO Africa region as free of wild poliovirus is a watershed for the WHO and all partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).

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According to him, this follows after Nigeria, the last wild poliovirus endemic country in the region, recorded no new cases in three years – the requisite period – since it last reported cases of wild poliovirus.

“For over three decades, we at Sanofi Pasteur have been supporting the global public health coalition on polio through our expertise and the provision of innovative vaccines to support national, regional, and global immunization programs for children under 5 years of age.”

“There is no cure for polio but the disease can be prevented through administration of a simple and effective vaccine, given multiple times. This is why efforts are underway across every country to rapidly boost immunity levels in children and protect them from polio paralysis,” He said.

However, ARCC, the body responsible for certifying the eradication of wild poliovirus in the WHO Africa Region (WHO-Afro), has granted the region ‘wild poliovirus free’ status on Tuesday.

The vaccines Head for Africa said that Sanofi Pasteur is proud to be associated with this major milestone for Nigeria, the WHO Africa Region, and the overall global efforts to free the world of polio.

“The fight against polio worldwide is not yet over. Sanofi Pasteur remains committed to supporting the GPEI until the disease is eradicated worldwide. Once polio is eradicated, the world can celebrate the delivery of a major global public good that will benefit all people equally, no matter where they live. By then, no child will ever again suffer the terrible effects of lifelong polio-paralysis,” said WoIf.

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