Ehanire: COVID, insecurity fuelling re-emerging polio variants in Nigeria

Osagie Ehanire, minister of health, says COVID-19 and insecurity are fuelling re-emerging poliovirus variants in Nigeria.

On August 25, 2020, the Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) for polio eradication officially declared Nigeria free of indigenous wild poliovirus.

There have, however, been outbreaks of other polio variants such as the circulating mutant poliovirus type two (cMPV2) which occurs as a result of immunity gaps in children.

Speaking at the celebration of the anniversary of wild poliovirus eradication in Nigeria, the minister said the government and development partners made huge investments and sacrifices over the years for the eradication of polio.

“The day may have come too late for those who have been paralysed and those frontline health workers who paid the supreme price for the triumph of eradicating the disease,” he said.

“However, for the millions of children who are prevented from the crippling effects of WPV these sacrifices will not go in vain and therefore the significance of commemorating this day.

“The past 3 years have been a mixed bag of events for the country as the impact of COVID-19 affected our health system, and also the emerging insecurity in some parts of the country poses a challenge to the onslaught of the re-emerging variants of the polio viruses (cVPV2) which are remnants in the environment as a result of suboptimal environmental sanitation and can potentially be virulent and affect children who have not been enrolled in the routine immunization system.”

He, however, added that the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has been directed “to mount the needed response to deal with these viruses within an integrated framework in order to address other public health challenges including the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination in the country”.

Also speaking at the event, Eduardo Celades, chief of health for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said though wild polio has been eradicated, “complacency is not an option, as polio could come back if we let our guards down, looking at what happened in Zambia and Mozambique, even in the UK and USA. Polio anywhere is polio everywhere”.

“We might have won the battle against wild polio, but the war against all types of polio is not yet over. A circulating variant of poliovirus is still affecting too many children in Nigeria,” he said.