Nigeria revels in removal from list of polio-endemic nations

Nigeria on Saturday celebrated the announcement by the UN health agency that polio is no longer endemic in the country. Polio which can cause life-long paralysis can be prevented with a simple vaccination.
Polio is no longer endemic in Nigeria, the World Health Organisation said late on Friday, leaving only Pakistan and its war-battered neighbour Afghanistan in the list of countries where the disease is prevalent.

"It's a great moment for Nigeria," Dr. Tunji Funsho, chairman of the Rotary International's Polio Campaign in Nigeria, told The Associated Press. "We should celebrate but with a caveat that we should not let our guard down." He attributed the success to teamwork between government and non-governmental health organisations.
Stigmas falling away
The main goal now is to increase the gains made and ensure Nigeria has no new polio cases in the next two years so that the WHO can declare Nigeria a polio-free country, Dr. Funsho said. "Until that happens we are not out of the woods yet." he said.
Once stigmatised as the world's polio epicenter, Nigeria in late July celebrated its first year with no reported case of the crippling disease, having overcome obstacles ranging from Islamic extremists who assassinated vaccinators to rumours the vaccine was a plot to sterilise Muslims.
Just 20 years ago this West African nation was recording 1 000 polio cases a year - the highest in the world. The last recorded case of a child paralysed by the wild polio virus endemic in Nigeria's impoverished and mainly Muslim north was on 24 July, 2014.
WHO said Nigeria and Africa as a whole are now closer to being certified polio-free.
The agency warned polio remains endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan and that as long as the disease exists anywhere "it's a threat to children everywhere."