Gates Foundation CEO says polio's return to Nigeria is her 'biggest disappointment'
Summary
Nigeria had recently accounted for more than half of the world’s polio cases, but was declared “polio-free” in 2015 by the World Health Organization.
Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has said that her “biggest disappointment” since joining the foundation in 2014 was witnessing the re-emergence of polio in Nigeria after it had previously been thought to be eradicated from the African continent.
In August, the Nigerian federal government reported that two children had been paralyzed by polio, after more than two years without a reported case of wild poliovirus in the country. That prompted a renewed emergency outbreak response in the country. Nigeria had recently accounted for more than half of the world’s polio cases, but was declared “polio-free” in 2015 by the World Health Organization.
Speaking late in November at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., Desmond-Hellmann said: “The world had happily gone two years polio-free in the entire continent of Africa ... and when these two cases were reported in Nigeria it was a big setback.”
So far in 2016, 33 cases of wild poliovirus have been reported, most of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The experience taught the foundation to be more sceptical of apparent success, according to its CEO who offered health policy advice for the in-coming Administration of Donald Trump in the United States. “My number one thing that I would want president-elect Trump to remember is that a health crisis anywhere is a health crisis everywhere,” the Gates CEO said.
Related
-
WHO declares Africa free of wild poliovirus
It is the second time a virus has been stamped out in Africa, after the eradication of smallpox four decades ago.
-
Access Bank distributes mosquito nets to pregnant women
The campaign to reduce malaria burden among pregnant women reached 200,000 people online.
-
HelpMeSee launches campaign to eradicate cataract blindness in the Gambia
The Ministry of Health is collaborating with HelpMeSee in “Campaign to Eliminate Cataract Blindness by 2018.”
Sustainable Development Section Sponsor
-
Access Bank Plc ...Financing the future
Most Popular
- The imperatives of an integrated Eastern Africa power market
- Ecobank raises $450 million in world’s first Nature Bond on London Stock Exchange
- Africa CDC welcomes $220 million boost for Ebola outbreak response
- Nigeria emerges as the world’s most generous country
- ILO adopts landmark treaty on gig work
