Africa’s giant celebrated a landmark yesterday as it marked one year of no fresh cases of polio. This comes as a relief to Nigeria which at a point in her history had over 1,000 reported cases annually.
This means that in a few weeks, Nigeria stands a real chance of being taken off the list of polio-endemic countries- a list in which Nigeria is the only African country.
President Buhari has pledged that his administration will do everything to ensure that there are no new reported cases. At an event held to celebrate the landmark, the Special adviser to the President on Media, Mr. Femi Adesina said; “Today, 25th of July, 2015, Nigeria has successfully completed one year without any case reported of the wild polio virus.
“Achieving this feat has placed us firmly on the path to eradicating this paralysing disease from our land.
“I seize this opportunity to call on state governors, our traditional and religious leaders, the private sector and our mothers and fathers to redouble their efforts to ensure that every child and every new born baby is vaccinated with the polio vaccine and other life saving routine vaccines,”