Bill Gates hails Jonathan, Nigeria in fight against polio

American business magnate and philanthropist, Bill Gates, has lauded the Goodluck Jonathan administration for recording significant success in its fight against the endemic polio virus disease.

The co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, took to his official twitter handle, @BillGates, to celebrate the success, noting that it is one of his favourite stories of the year.

Commenting further on his personal note of “Good news you may have missed in 2014”, Gates stressed that ‘Nigeria had a pretty good year’, projecting that the country will be polio-free in no distant time. He said that the infrastructure Nigeria has built to fight polio actually made it easier for the country to contain the dreaded Ebola virus disease (EVD).

“A lot of the media coverage about Nigeria this year focused on two things: Ebola and terrorism. Both are frightening, and they masked the fact that from a global health perspective, Nigeria actually had a pretty good year. Although it’s one of only three countries that have never been free from polio (Pakistan and Afghanistan are the other two), I don’t think it will be on that list for long. Nigeria has reported only six cases of polio this year, compared to more than 50 last year. What’s more, the infrastructure Nigeria has built to fight polio actually made it easier for them to swiftly contain Ebola. The fact that Nigeria is now Ebola free is a great example of how doing the work to fight things like fighting polio also leaves countries better prepared to deal with outbreaks of other diseases,” the co-founder of Microsoft said.

The Special Assistant to President Jonathan on New Media, Reno Omokri, has thanked Bill Gates for acknowledging the bid of the government to end polio in the country, noting that it is one of the transformation promised by his principal. He made this known via his twitter handle, @renoomokri.

Nigeria has not recorded a single new case of the wild polio virus since July. Only six cases have been recorded in Nigeria this year – a dramatic 90-per-cent decline from last year.

This is crucial progress, since Nigeria has been the sole reservoir for the spread of the virus to dozens of other African countries. It would leave Pakistan and Afghanistan as the only remaining countries in the world where polio is still endemic.

A decade ago, the campaign was in serious trouble, as northern politicians and religious leaders spread rumours that the polio vaccine caused AIDS and infertility. In February, 2013, disaster struck again when gunmen killed nine vaccination workers in the northern city of Kano.