The World Health Organization will later on today certify the total eradication of poliomyelitis in Africa. This means the continent is free of the disease, four years after the last cases recorded in Borno State, Nigeria.

Indeed, the unsafe environment in Northeastern Nigeria due to Boko Haram had made it difficult to carry out vaccination campaigns against wild polio. Also, Islamic extremists in these Muslim-majority regions banned people from getting their children vaccinated claiming it was a Western conspiracy to sterilize young Muslims.

“Thanks to the relentless efforts by governments, donors, frontline health workers and communities, up to 1.8 million children have been saved from the crippling life-long paralysis,” the WHO said in a statement. But the organization warns that the disease could reappear in Nigeria, particularly in areas controlled by Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West African Province (Iswap) where about 30,000 children have not yet received the vaccine. Experts however reassure that this figure is “too low” to be a source of endemic transmission.

Except for Afghanistan and Pakistan, where it remains endemic, polio has been eradicated almost everywhere in the world.

Stéphane Alidjinou