By Elizabeth Merab More by this AuthorAfrica has been declared free of endemic “wild” polio after a three-decade campaign against a disease that once paralysed 75,000 children on the continent every year. “Now future generations of African children can live free of wild polio,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa. The certification comes four years after Nigeria – the last polio-endemic country in Africa – recorded its last case of wild polio. It also means that five of the six WHO regions that represent over 90 per cent of the world’s population have eliminated wild polio. There are still pockets of children who aren’t getting the polio vaccine, leading to outbreaks of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus.

Source: Daily Nation August 26, 2020 03:45 UTC