By Alexis Akwagyiram and Angela Ukomadu
LAGOS, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Nigerian Gbemisola Ijigbamigbe's
right leg was virtually paralysed after she contracted wild
polio aged 11 months. Now the 28-year-old leads an active life
as a wheelchair basketball player and also enjoys swimming and
kayaking.
"Polio is not a death sentence," she told Reuters, smiling.
Thousands of people across Africa still live with the
effects of the disease, but on Tuesday the World Health
Organization (WHO) is expected to declare the region free of
endemic wild polio, four years after the last case was recorded
in Nigeria.
Health officials are set to announce that all 47 countries
in the WHO's Africa region have eradicated the crippling viral
disease that attacks the nervous system and can cause
irreversible paralysis within hours.
Children under five are the most vulnerable, but people can
be fully protected with preventative vaccines. To keep the virus
at bay, population immunisation coverage rates must be high and
constant surveillance is crucial.
Globally, wild polio case numbers have been cut drastically
due to national and regional immunisation for babies and
children. The disease remains endemic in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, however.
"Until wild poliovirus is eradicated everywhere, it's still
a risk everywhere," Michael Galway, a polio expert at the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, told Reuters, urging continued
vigilance.
"There's nothing that prevents the virus from making the
route from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Africa," he said.
'INSIDE I WOULD CRY'
Ijigbamigbe, who is based in Nigeria's commercial capital
Lagos, looks back on a childhood that was blighted by the
emotional pain of wearing over-sized clothes to hide her
difficulty walking.
"I was... trying to mask my emotions so that whatever you
say does not get to me. But inside... I would cry," she recalls,
her pronounced limp hinting at her condition.
The WHO estimates that 1.8 million children have been saved
from life-long paralysis from wild polio.
Yet despite Tuesday's expected announcement at a
videoconferencing event, a vaccine-derived strain of the disease
- which can infect people where there is only partial
vaccination and results in the same symptoms as the wild form -
continues to circulate in Africa.
"We must stay vigilant and keep up vaccination rates to
avert a resurgence of the wild poliovirus and address the
continued threat of the vaccine-derived polio," said Dr
Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.
Vaccine-derived poliovirus cases can occur when the weakened
live virus in the oral polio vaccine passes among
under-immunized populations and eventually changes to a form
that can cause paralysis.
The 16 countries in Africa affected by circulating
vaccine-derived poliovirus outbreaks include Angola, Burkina
Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia.
Usman Yusuf - a member of Nigeria's National Association of
Polio Survivors who contracted the disease aged 3 - welcomed
wild polio's eradication from Africa.
Speaking after refereeing a soccer game played by polio
survivors sitting on wheeled boards and propelled by their arms,
Yusuf said he looked forward to an end to all polio one day.
"We are affected. We don't expect our children and our
younger ones to follow the same route."