Africa Declared Polio Free by WHO
ANDERSON: The coronavirus pandemic has consumed every aspect of our lives for well over six months. But today I wanted to take a break and bring you a public health success. The World Health Organization has officially declared polio eradicated in Africa. That's right. The disease that once paralyzed 75,000 African kids a year has been eliminated. Well, the announcement follows four years without any cases reported on the continent. It took the cooperation of the African government and almost 9 billion polio vaccines delivered to Africa since 1996. Well, during our COVID times, this triumph exemplifies how vaccines can be used successfully for disease eradication.</s>DR. TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: In the end, money spent eradicating polio is not a cost; it's an investment, an investment in a healthier and more productive future in which polio no longer robs children and prevents them from becoming everything they could be. A future without polio may have once seemed impossible. But in the words of Nelson Mandela, when people are determined, they can overcome anything.</s>ANDERSON: Well, a brief look now at the recent history of that effort to eradicate polio.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dr. Salk and his colleagues have beaten an insidious, deadly enemy, the scourge of infantile paralysis. The battle has been won. The war is not yet over.</s>ANDERSON (voice-over): Over half a century later, the war against the debilitating disease now in its last mile. According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, 99 percent of wild polio has been eradicated in the past three decades.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Polio can be eradicated. Two of the polio virus strains are gone and only type 1 polio remains and that only in Pakistan and Afghanistan.</s>ANDERSON: Well, the World Health Organization warning if they fail to reach every last child at risk, well, the number of cases could once again rise into the hundreds of thousands. Joining us now is Michel Zaffran, the director of the WHO's Global Polio Eradication Initiative. I have to say a huge congratulations. This is a massive achievement. Years of hard work. Do explain to our viewers what went into this success.</s>MICHEL ZAFFRAN, WHO: Well, indeed, Becky, an extraordinary success for the African continent and the African countries. What it means is that, you know, we have actually, over the past 25 years, sort of have seen an intense coordination across countries to vaccinate all children on the continent, through coordinated efforts, synchronized national immunization days and millions of volunteers who have been involved in these efforts.</s>ZAFFRAN: We have also had to employ sort of a very innovative approach, particularly over the past four years, with the last reservoir in the wild virus in Africa was in the northeastern part of Nigeria, where the group, Boko Haram, was sort of limiting access and limiting vaccination to the population there. We had to use the satellite imagery, to use sort of a special strategies to look at the areas where the virus was circulating and vaccinate the people coming in and out, as well as doing fast entry points into those areas which were difficult to access. Some people have risked their lives and, unfortunately, some health workers have their lives in doing this extraordinary piece of work. But there we are, the wild polio virus has eradicated. The last time we saw it in Nigeria was in September of 2016.</s>ANDERSON: Yes, this is remarkable. Unless we forget why this matters, behind these numbers, of course, victims and survivors. Let's just hear from a couple of survivors about why this matters.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're very delighted with the announcement of polio free in Nigeria and Africa tonight. So welcome that development. And we don't expect our children and our younger ones to follow the same route.</s>ANDERSON: What happens next, I guess, is the big question. Vaccinations, as I understand it, will have to continue to keep the virus from coming back and, as I understand it, coronavirus is disrupting that effort, sir.</s>ZAFFRAN: Yes, indeed. First of all, the</s>ANDERSON: Now that is very frustrating.</s>ANDERSON: OK. We've got you back?</s>ZAFFRAN: Can you hear me?</s>ANDERSON: Apologies, you froze. Start again. Yes, we can hear you, sir.</s>ZAFFRAN: OK, yes, indeed. The wild virus continues to circulate in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. And as long as it survives in two countries, it remains a risk not only for Africa but for many other countries with weak health systems and where children are not being vaccinated. So therefore, we absolutely need to continue to vaccinate until the last reservoirs of the wild polio virus in Pakistan and Afghanistan are wiped out. The coronavirus pandemic has indeed sort of been a problem. We have had to stop vaccination activities since March. And, of course, during that period, the virus has had a chance to stretch in Pakistan and Afghanistan and we absolutely need to resume those activities as soon as possible so that we can eliminate and eradicate the virus once and for all.</s>ANDERSON: And what can we learn from the eradication of polio through vaccination on the African continent that we might use to ensure that coronavirus isn't the same sort of scourge going forward? What have we learned about the importance of vaccinations?</s>ZAFFRAN: Well, first and foremost, we learned that vaccines work. So if we do have a vaccine against COVID-19, you know, it will be -- if it is licensed and proven safe and effective, it will be a tool to fight the disease. But look, what we also learned, the strategy we put in place throughout Africa as well as in Pakistan, Afghanistan, to actually fight polio has been tremendously useful to fight COVID-19, to inform communities, to trace contacts, to identify the cases, to do the laboratory detection of the virus. So this public health infrastructure that was founded by the countries but also by the international communities is tremendously useful. And we need to actually ensure that countries can sustain that on the long run because, without such public health infrastructure, it's going to be difficult to actually vaccinate the communities and stop COVID-19 and any other public health intervention.</s>ANDERSON: With that, we'll leave it there. We thank you very much indeed for joining us. And again, lest we forget why this is such an important story, 350,000 kids globally were paralyzed by 1988 from the polio disease. It is an infectious disease that was once endemic in 125 countries.</s>ANDERSON: Cases decreased by 99 percent through mass vaccination and, as we have been discussing, now only seen in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But concern that, of course, this good news could be eliminated, should these vaccines not get to those who need them the most. Thank you. We'll take a short break. Back after this.