Niger detects poliovirus in four LGs

The Niger State Government has detected five polio cases in Niger State from four local government areas.

The state government made this known on Wednesday during a mass mobilisation dialogue organised in collaboration with the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF and other partners.

The government warned residents to intensify surveillance and immunisation to ensure that the state eradicates the disease and records a polio-free state in the shortest time.

The government said the virus was detected in Chanchaga Bida, Mariga and Magna, stressing that it has embarked on surveillance and sensitisation to ensure there are no more cases.

The state immunisation officer, Abubakar Kpantu, who spoke at the dialogue, said the aim of the state was to eradicate the disease in the state.

“The virus was detected in the state. We found three from human and two from environmental sampling in four local governments and a lot of strategies have been put in place to curtail the spread of the disease.

“We did reactive vaccination, that is, we promptly reacted to vaccinate other children within those areas where those viruses were actually found.

“And also a lot of community engagement efforts were done to communicate with the community leaders and other intervention groups within those communities to actually educate them about the particular cases we are seeing in the environment and how negatively it will impact if people stay in resistance, not taking immunisation.

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“All of this is as a result of what? Poor routine immunisation. The virus is here and it is as a result of a high level of non-compliance. This is just a drop in the ocean. We can see this because it’s a campaign. We have to go out to actually act rather than the concept of the mother to bring their child for vaccination compared to routine immunisation that is voluntary,” Kpantu said.

The representatives of the WHO, UNICEF and other partners, in their contributions, called for increased surveillance in the state to ensure that Niger State is free from the polio virus.

They affirmed the need for compliance by children and parents, who, they said, must be deliberate about taking the polio vaccination. They also called for community sensitisation.

“We still carry out routine immunisation of the population. We are vaccinating the children to ensure that we eradicate the disease from the state. We sample humans, that is, any child that we find in the community with paralysis, having a similar feature to polio-affected victims.

“We quickly notify our local surveillance officers to collect samples for tests to see if it is polio or something else that is actually causing the paralysis, because it’s not only the polio virus that causes paralysis.

“We also check within our environment because there is one found in the environment and one found in humans. While you can locate the one linked to humans, you cannot locate the one found in the environment because it is not linked to anybody.

“We detected the virus in Chanchaga, Bida, Magama and Mariga. The virus is still circulating within our environment. We collected the sample in the environmental sampling, making a total of five polio diseases we have in the state, three from humans and two from environmental sampling,” they said.