The National Primary Health Care Development Agency, has stated that Nigeria had a significant reduction of 95 percent in the prevalence of Circulating Variant Polio Virus type 2 infections during the period spanning from 2021 to 2023.
During the 40th Expert Review Committee meeting on polio and routine immunisation, held in Abuja, the Executive Director of the agency, Faisal Shuaib, made the following statement on Tuesday.
Since 2016, he claimed, Nigeria has not had a case of the wild poliovirus, and there has been progress in the number of instances of the circulating variant poliovirus.
He said, “This variant polio viruses are a different type of polio viruses that have mutated from the type of virus that we know. As you are aware viruses have the ability to change their nature. This is what we are dealing with right now. But we have also seen progress since 2021 when we reported over 1,028 reports of circulating variant polio viruses in their environment.”
According to Shuaib, the nation was also able to stop the growth of cVPV2 cases, which went from 30 states in 2021 to only four states this year. Only 16 local government areas in the four states, according to him, were impacted.
He said, “Of the 57 reports that we have received of CVPV2 this year, 51 are from Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto states.”
