DAKAR, Senegal — Africa is set to announce that it has stamped out wild poliovirus after a three-decade campaign against a disease that once paralyzed 75,000 children on the continent every year. The achievement is a major step toward ridding the globe of the virus that causes the disabling — and sometimes deadly — disease of polio: Only Afghanistan and Pakistan are still reporting cases. “Future generations of African children can live free of wild poliovirus,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s director for Africa, said in a briefing on Monday. He said 1.8 million cases of polio-related paralysis had been prevented over the past 24 years. Every year, hundreds of people across Africa are still being infected with circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus, which can infect people in areas where there is only partial vaccination.

Source: The North Africa Journal August 24, 2020 16:21 UTC