GREAT NEWS! WHO declares Africa has eradicated Polio after decades-long battle

Africa is free of polio after years of trying to eradicate the virus, the World Health Organization has declared.

The landmark achievement comes after decades of campaigning and vaccination programmes across the continent. No cases of polio have been diagnosed in Africa in four years — the threshold to certify eradication of the crippling virus. The last case was detected in 2016 in Nigeria, where vaccination efforts had been hampered by Boko Haram jihadists. Professor Rose Gana Fomban Leke, chair of the African Regional Certification Commission for Polio eradication, called it a 'historic day' for the continent. Poliomyelitis - the medical term for polio - is a contagious virus which attacks the spinal cord and causes irreversible paralysis in children, sometimes within hours. 

It paralysed 75,000 children a year in Africa in the 90s, when efforts to eradicate the virus were stepped up. A working life-long vaccine wiped out the disease in developed countries like the US and UK but the illness has carried on for years in poorer parts of the world. 

Polio now joins smallpox in the list of viruses that have been wiped out in Africa — 'one of the greatest achievements in public health history', the WHO said. It now only exists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are, however, still rare cases of polio among Africans who haven't had the vaccine because virus fragments in the jab can pass in the faeces of someone who has been vaccinated then mutate and eventually infect unprotected people. 

In other promising developments, the WHO claims Africa's Covid-19 outbreak may have finally passed its peak. 

More than one million cases and 28,000 deaths have been recorded across the continent since the pandemic began.

Of those who develop symptoms, these tend to appear three-to-21 days after infection and include:

• High temperature
• Sore throat
• Headache
• Abdominal pain
• Aching muscles
• Nausea and vomiting