LAGOS - Nigerian Gbemisola Ijigbamigbe’s right leg was virtually paralysed after she contracted wild polio aged 11 months. Now the 28-year-old leads an active life as a wheelchair basketball player and also enjoys swimming and kayaking.Thousands of people across Africa still live with the effects of the disease, but on Tuesday the World Health Organization is expected to declare the region free of endemic wild polio, four years after the last case was recorded in Nigeria.
Globally, wild polio case numbers have been cut drastically due to national and regional immunisation for babies and children. The disease remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, however. A victim of polio disease heads the ball during a game of para-soccer in Abuja, Nigeria August 22, 2020. REUTERS/Afolabi SotundeIjigbamigbe, who is based in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos, looks back on a childhood that was blighted by the emotional pain of wearing over-sized clothes to hide her difficulty walking.
Yet despite Tuesday’s expected announcement at a videoconferencing event, a vaccine-derived strain of the disease - which can infect people where there is only partial vaccination and results in the same symptoms as the wild form - continues to circulate in Africa.
Waiting for the day to declare the world free from the WHO plague....
well, the United States is finally free from the China virus!!! or will be since I get re-elected! ever since approval from US_FDA of some questionable treatment, we're leading the world!!! VOTE QUIMBY!
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