Our health sector climbs higher: Nigeria exits the polio club
The World Health Organization has commended Nigeria for its successful containment of the deadly Ebola virus and urged other countries to emulate its control method.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Margaret Chan, who stated this during a meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan on the Ebola Virus and Polio mellitus, also announced Nigeria as the next country to exit from the list of polio endemic countries, having successfully reduced the burden by 95 per cent between 2013 and 2014.
Thus, Nigeria has been urged to provide its expertise – on Ebola, Polio – and build the capacity of other countries in West Africa.
The Executive Secretary, of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Mohammed Ado explained that Nigeria will support the other countries “in terms of capacity building, in terms of the emergency operation centres, and also make available 500 human resources to assist them”.
“So what this means is that public health system in Nigeria is working and working very well under the leadership of minister of health and with the overhead oversight of Mr president,” he quipped.
The first case of the Ebola virus in Nigeria was recorded when Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American, arrived the country from Liberia on July 20. Although, seven Nigerians lost their lives to Ebola, more than that number of people have recovered from it. So far, the virus has killed more than 2,800 people across West Africa.
Polio is a highly contagious, devastating disease that mainly affects children under five years of age. It invades the nervous system, and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. Before now, polio was endemic in 125 countries and paralyzed about 1,000 children per day but Nigeria has successfully combated the crippling disease. There were 122 cases in 2012, 53 cases in 2013 and only one case in 2014, that was on February 1 in Kano.
