FACT-CHECK: Jonathan, Health Minister Lied About Polio Eradication In Nigeria

As part of his campaign to be re-elected, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has reportedly said that his administration has “totally eradicated” polio.

According to This Day newspaper, Mr. Jonathan said that the World Health Organisation (WHO) should take the required steps to declare Nigeria polio-free, as it did with Ebola. President Jonathan is said to have made the remarks at the Palace of the Asagba of Asaba, Chike Edozien, on February 27.


Mr. Jonathan’s claim follows that of the health minister, Halliru Alhassan, who said in January that Nigeria would “be certified polio-free” that month. Punch newspaper wrote that Mr. Alhassan had said that the country qualifies “to be declared polio-free in line with global requirements” because no polio cases had been diagnosed in the last six months of 2014.

But the chairman of Nigeria’s expert review committee on polio eradication, Oyewale Tomori, was widely reported to have said recently that Nigeria can only be certified as polio-free in 2018 should there be no further cases of polio before then.

Who is right? Could Nigeria soon be officially declared polio-free or only in 2018?

Six cases in 2014

Polio infections are usually symptom-free, but in about one in 200 cases it causes paralysis, usually in the legs and often for life. People can die from polio when the virus paralyses the muscles that help them breathe.

Thanks to immunisation, the disease has been eradicated from most of the world. Only Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan remain on the WHO’s list of polio-endemic countries.

Its toll is highly visible on the streets of Nigerian cities like Lagos, where victims wheel themselves around on skateboards. By mid-2003, polio was on the verge of being eradicated in the country when a group of religious and political leaders in northern Nigeria claimed that the polio vaccine caused infertility. They advised their followers against having their children vaccinated. What followed was a surge in new cases.

Since then the Nigerian government and its international partners have made steady progress in finally eradicating polio. In 2014, Nigeria’s total case count was 6, compared to 53 in 2013, a reduction of almost 90%.

How polio certification works



To ensure that a country is truly free of polio, the WHO requires two waiting periods.

The first is measured from the date that paralysis commences in the last case of “wild polio”. (Wild polio refers to a form of the virus that was common in pre-vaccination times and caused a large burden of disease. It has been virtually eliminated except in the countries where polio is still endemic.) If a year passes without any new cases diagnosed, the WHO removes a country from its list of polio-endemic countries.

Nigeria’s last case was identified on 24 July 2014. The country could therefore be taken off the WHO’s list of polio-endemic countries in four months’ time should there be no new cases.

To be certified polio-free, WHO rules require that a country and its regional neighbours prove that they have stopped the transmission of the polio virus for at least three consecutive years. Detailed laboratory testing data must be submitted to support this.

Therefore, if Nigeria experiences no further cases of polio, the region could be certified polio-free by 2018, at the earliest.

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