Samuel Awoyinfa, Abeokuta

As Nigeria joined the rest of the world to mark World Polio Day, the governor of Rotary Club, District 9110 comprising of Lagos and Ogun States, Mr Kola Sodipo, has said that if Nigeria maintains its current clean slate on the incidence of polio till August 2019, the country will exit the list of polio endemic nations.

Sodipo said this in Abeokuta on Tuesday, as he declared that there was no single case of polio in the country in the last 26 months.

Addressing journalists, Rotarians and other stakeholders, Sodipo said, “Between 2009 and 2017, Nigeria went from 388 cases to zero. In fact, as of 2012, Nigeria had assumed a pariah status in the global polio eradication community, because it was single-handedly responsible for half of the global incidence of polio. Today, due to the efforts and commitment of Rotary and its partners, Nigeria has gone more than two years without polio and three of the last four years have been polio-free.”

He added that the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, had, however, warned that there could be as many as 200,000 new cases of polio in the next 10 years, if efforts to combat the deadly virus were not sustained.

Sodipo said, “Paralysis is the most severe symptom associated with polio leading to permanent disability and death. Between two and 10 out of 100 people who have paralysis from poliovirus infection die because the virus affects the muscles that help them breathe. Even children who seemed to fully recover could develop new muscle pain, weakness, or paralysis as adults, 15 to 40 years later.

“Rotary Club International had spent over $10bn since it started its polio eradication intervention programme in 1988 with the provision of vaccines to combat the deadly disease.

This effort had yielded a positive result, reducing the scourge from 350,000 cases to just 22 in only two countries of the world, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The federal government had also spent over $300m in the last three years to combat the disease just as Rotary Club is also committed to raising $150m in support of polio eradication by 2020,”Sodipo submitted.

He added that once polio is eradicated, approximately $40 billion in resources can be freed up to tackle other diseases.

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