"Thanks to the relentless efforts by governments, donors, frontline health workers and communities, up to 1.8 million children have been saved from the crippling life-long paralysis," the WHO said in a statement ahead of the official announcement by videoconference at 15:00 GMT on Tuesday.
Forty-six presidents of the region will celebrate alongside supporters of polio eradication efforts, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote.
"Happiness is an understatement. We've been on this marathon for over 30 years," said Tunji Funsho, a Nigerian doctor and local anti-polio coordinator for Rotary International.
The achievement marks a crucial step towards ridding the world of the virus.
"It's a real achievement, I feel joy and relief at the same time," he added.
"Today we are also celebrating another public health triumph: the eradication of wild poliovirus in Africa.
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) August 25, 2020
This is an incredible achievement, and a much-needed cause for celebration."-@DrTedros #RCAFRO70 pic.twitter.com/V1rpBq5Vn6
Acutely infectious disease
Poliomyelitis, or "wild polio" is an acutely infectious and contagious disease which attacks the spinal cord and causes irreversible paralysis in children.
It was endemic around the world until a vaccine was found in the 1950s, though many poorer countries in Asia and Africa struggled to get access to it.
When the WHO launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, it counted 350,000 cases worldwide and in 1996 there still were more than 70,000 cases in Africa alone.
But thanks to a collective global effort and considerable financial backing - some $19 billion over 30 years - only Afghanistan and Pakistan are still reporting cases: a total of 87 this year.
The WHO's declaration doesn’t mean Africa is entirely polio-free. The vaccine-derived polio virus, a rare mutated form of the weakened virus contained in the oral vaccine, continues to cause occasional crippling outbreaks in some countries including Nigeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Central African Republic.
The case of Nigeria
For many years Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with 200 million inhabitants, remained a sticking point.
Its Muslim-majority northern area boycotted the vaccine in 2003 and 2004 after rumours that it was a conspiracy to sterilise young Muslims.
Traditional chiefs and religious leaders worked hard to convince populations that the vaccine was safe and progress was made.
But the emergence of Islamist group Boko Haram in 2009 caused another rupture in the programme and by 2016 four new cases of wild poliovirus were reported in Borno state.
"At the time, we couldn't reach two-thirds of the children of Borno state - 400,000 children couldn't access the vaccine," said Dr Funsho.
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Building trust
The security situation remains volatile in the region, particularly around Lake Chad and the border with Niger where militants with the Islamic State armed group are also active.
But vaccination teams have been able to work in partially accessible areas under the protection of the Nigerian army and local self-defence militias.
In areas which are fully controlled by the jihadists, the WHO and its partners sought to intercept people coming in and out along market and transport routes in order to spread medical information and recruit "health informants" who could tell them about any polio cases.
"We built a pact of trust with these populations, for instance by giving them free medical supplies," said Dr Musa Idowu Audu, coordinator for the WHO in Borno.
Today, it is estimated that only 30,000 children are still "inaccessible" – a number considered too low by scientists to allow for an epidemic to break out.
The challenge now is to ensure that no new cases of polio arrive from Afghanistan or Pakistan and that vaccinations continue to ensure that children across the continent are protected from the disease.
(with AFP)
