When the world came together
In the present times, good news is a rarity. Indeed, the only time one sees good news these days may well be when it is being used to couch particularly bad news to not make it sound quite as bad. At a time like this, victories, big or small, local or international, go a long way in giving hope for human society to collectively keep trudging on with hope.
This week, one such piece of good news came from Africa when the 47 nations were finally certified to be free of wild polio. The historic journey that finally came to fruition on August 25, 2020, started nearly three decades ago when then South African President Nelson Mandela gave the call to "kick polio out of Africa". When he gave the call, it was estimated that 75,000 children in Africa were paralysed by the virus every year. Worldwide, the number was as high as 350,000 children every year. A menace that has plagued humanity for thousands of years in one form or another, polio ravaged the world uncontested until the first vaccine against it was developed in the 1950s. Soon thereafter, the easily recognisable oral vaccine was developed and licensed in the 1960s.
It would take decades from this point for even the most advanced nations to completely conquer polio. While the US managed to eradicate polio in 1979, the EU took until 2002 to do the same. After a much-acclaimed campaign, India also managed to eradicate polio alongside much of South-East Asia in 2014.
Africa was a difficult challenge, involving processes that were not required in other efforts owing to the unique impediments on the continent in reaching every child with the vaccine. It was noted that many healthcare workers bravely had to venture into insurgent territories following major conflicts to deliver doses of the vaccine to the children. Many lost their lives along the way but it paid off. A concentrated international effort spearheaded by WHO saw the steady immunisation of hundreds of millions of children over a period of decades until 2019, when Nigeria, the last polio-endemic country in Africa reported three consecutive years without any new cases of polio. Along the way, the polio eradication campaign in Africa did more good than even initially envisioned. The WHO lead campaign became an authority on diseases in the African region, providing much-needed infrastructure and expertise to tackle other epidemics that came up, such as the 2014 outbreak of ebola in West Africa. In the current context, the very same campaign has now been repurposed to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in the region, bringing hope and stability.
It must be noted that when it is stated that Africa is 'polio-free', it specifically refers to wild polio. A rare vaccine-derived version of the virus continues to exist in parts of Africa, propagated by migrant communities that have low immunisation coverage and poor access to any substantial means of healthcare. Once the current pandemic is brought down to a manageable scale, efforts to eradicate all forms of polo on the continent will continue unabated as they have for decades. As of now, polio is only endemic to two countries in the world — Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is a much-required win and a good example of what the global community can achieve when united. In sharp contrast to the plentiful misinformation regarding the current pandemic, heartwarming images of small children bringing their younger siblings to get inoculated for polio bear testament to the efforts made to reach the most remote sections of humanity in efforts to eradicate an age-old viral foe.
