In an interview with The Guardian, the immediate past Governor of Rotary Club District 9125, Dr Mike Omotoso, explayned that we are yet to kick polio out of Nigeria. "Let me correct this impression, polio has not been kicked out from Nigeria, but the country has been removed from the list of the polio-endemic nation, when we started this work almost 29 years ago, we had 135 countries that were polio-endemic nation, today we have just two, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We need three years without any case of polio before we can begin to say polio is out of Nigeria. The celebration we had when the representative of World Health Organization came was to certify Nigeria a non-polio-endemic nation.
There is a lot of confusion out there over the eradication of the disease, but the truth is we need to sustain what we have so that we can stay for three years without any polio case, we have gone two years now, meaning we still have a year to go to ascertain that we have kick polio out of Nigeria.
Rotarians have been contributing money towards the eradication of polio from Nigeria we have spent over $1.5billion globally towards eradication of polio, and in Nigeria alone we have spent $300million towards the eradication of the diseases. After vaccinating 2.5 billion children we are delighted to say yes, we are gradually kicking polio out of Nigeria".
Source: The Guardian