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Africa is officially wild polio free, says independent body

25 August 2020 - 11:25
By TimesLIVE
Since the last wild polio case was detected on August 21 2016 in Nigeria, the government has organised more than a dozen supplementary immunisation campaigns with oral polio vaccine, worked on strengthening routine immunisation and improved its polio surveillance networks to reach more children.
Image: Flickr/Center for Disease Control via The Conversation Since the last wild polio case was detected on August 21 2016 in Nigeria, the government has organised more than a dozen supplementary immunisation campaigns with oral polio vaccine, worked on strengthening routine immunisation and improved its polio surveillance networks to reach more children.

After decades of the disease posing a serious health-care crisis in Africa, the Africa Regional Certification Commission has declared the continent a wild polio free zone.

BBC reported that the milestone marks a significant victory for managing the communicable disease, with more than 95% of the African population immunised against the potentially deadly virus with paralysis as a defining characteristic.

Nigeria was the last country with a reported case of wild polio, leaving Afghanistan and Pakistan the only two countries in the world to still have cases of the virus strain.

TimesLIVE

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