BY Jesupemi Are
Gordon McInally, president of Rotary International, says the federal government should be vigilant to ensure that polio does not return to Nigeria.
McInally spoke on Friday while addressing State House correspondents after leading a delegation of the organisation to meet with President Bola Tinubu.
The Rotary International president said one of the reasons for the visit was to commend Tinubu for all the support the organisation had received from the Nigerian government in polio eradication.
“We’re very excited that worldwide we are about to complete the polio eradication campaign and of course, polio was certified free from Nigeria five years ago in 2019,” he said.
“But we have to remain vigilant. We cannot afford to let our guard down, we have to make sure that we continue the work to ensure that polio does not come back to places like Nigeria, to places in Africa, to places in other parts of the world as well.”
Speaking about the work of Rotary International on polio eradication across the world, McInally said the organisation has recorded success in “significantly decreasing the annual prevalence of the disease from over 230,000 cases to a remarkable milestone – zero reported cases in the past 20 weeks” .
“Thirty years ago, there were more than 350,000 cases of polio every year,” he said.
” In 2023, there were only 12 cases of polio anywhere in the world and all 12 cases were in a very prescribed area on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
“Even more exciting is the fact that it is now 20 weeks since we saw a single case of wild polio anywhere in the world.
“That is a cause for great celebration. But we must remain vigilant and we must carry on our polio campaign to ensure that we complete the job we started and to ensure that the entire world is free from the disease in the same way that Nigeria is at present.”
The Rotary International president said the organisation has initiated a significant $3 million project in Nigeria aimed at promoting safe childbirth for women over the past 18 months.
“We have a new project of scale here, which has a value of almost 3 million US dollars, that is working with pregnant women, encouraging them to have birth in safe clinics rather than at home, teaching them during their pregnancy about the importance of child care and already only 18 months into this project, we’ve seen an amazing reduction in both maternal mortality and also infant mortality. So it’s an exciting time to be here in Nigeria, and I’m thrilled to be here,” he said.
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