Africa is officially free of wild polio

The African continent is officially polio free. It is a great victory, but we must not let our guard down

(Photo: Badru Katumba / AFP via Getty Images) After decades of struggle, a victory finally arrives: Africa has been declared free from wild polio. To announce the eradication of the viral disease caused by poliovirus from the African continent was the Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC), a body appointed in 1998 by the World Health Organization (WHO) to eradicate polio in Africa, after noting that today more than 95% of the continent's population has been vaccinated and that the last strain of the virus found in nature (hence the adjective wild that accompanies it) has been eradicated. The WHO also stressed that it is only the second time that a virus has been eradicated from Africa, after smallpox, which was eradicated about forty years ago. Polio is now found in only two countries in the world: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Polio, remember, is an infectious disease caused by poliovirus that spreads from person to person (mainly among children at under 5 years old) via the fecal-oral route, usually through contaminated water, and which can lead to irreversible paralysis by attacking the central nervous system and death. As reported by Epicenter of the Higher Institute of Health, polio is caused by three types of poliovirus (1,2,3) belonging to the enterovirus genus, which attacks the nervous system in a few hours, destroying the neural cells and thus causing a paralysis which in some cases can become total. Currently there is no cure and the only way to prevent the disease is prevention through polio vaccines, which can protect children for life.