Polio affects children under five, even sometimes leading to incurable paralysis. Even death can occur when breathing muscles are affected by paralysis. There is no cure but the polio vaccine protects children for life. The disease is now only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nigeria is the last African country that has to be declared free from the disease, as it has accounted for more than half of all global cases less than 10 years ago.
More than 95% of Africa’s population has now been immunised from polio. This was one of the conditions that the Africa Regional Certification Commission set before declaring the continent free from polio. Now only the vaccine-derived poliovirus remains in Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) has now discovered a number of these cases in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Angola.
Data source: BBC