Nigeria and other African states overseen by the African Regional Office of the World Health Organization WHO are committed to ending all remaining forms of polio.
The Regional Office has also presented a scorecard to track progress
towards the eradication of the virus.
The African Region was certified free of wild poliovirus one year ago,
after four years without a case.
However, outbreaks of a Vaccine-Derived PolioVirus cVDPV is
spreading in African communities where too few children have received
the polio vaccine.
CVDPV is a weakened strain of the virus that has changed over time and
behaves more like the naturally occurring poliovirus.
WHO said, in a statement that the commitments came at the dedicated
71st meeting of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa.
Since 2018, 23 countries in the region have experienced outbreaks and
more than half of the global 1071 CVDPV cases were recorded in Africa.
According to WHO, cases increased last year partly because of
disruptions to polio vaccination campaigns caused by the outbreak of
COVID-19 pandemic.
