Rotary Commits $300m To Fight Polio In Nigeria
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Rotary International Foundation, Mark Daniel Maloney, has disclosed that the foundation has allocated $2m to reduce the mortality rate in Nigeria.
Maloney, who spoke with journalists on Thursday during a symbolic immunization outreach at Jahi 1 Primary Healthcare Centre, Abuja, said the foundation has so far committed over $300m to polio eradication in Nigeria alone.
The Rotary board chairman encouraged the federal government to focus on the eradication of the type 2 polio variant predominant in five states across the federation.
To this end, he said, the foundation would allocate the sum of $50m to fight polio in 2025, adding that a large portion of the fund would go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the wild poliovirus is still endemic.
Maloney assured that Nigeria would also benefit very immensely from the fund.
“We are providing the funding for Rotarians to do immunization work around the world. We have committed for many years over $300m to polio eradication in Nigeria alone.
“The Nigerian government is facing a significant challenge with the continuation of variant polio type 2. And, you know, we’ve seen so far about 92 cases through the cases that have been evaluated in 2024. Rotary can only do so much.
“We are a private organization. But we encourage the government to redouble their efforts, to put the focus on polio eradication that they did with the Wild Polio Virus and they were successful, such that I think the last case occurred in 2016. Along with the rest of Africa, Nigeria was declared wild polio virus-free in 2020.
“The International Polio Plus Committee is meeting at the end of this month on January 29 and 30. We will be making allocations to, you know, we don’t allocate funds directly to the government of Nigeria.
“However, it has been tens of millions of dollars annually for many years. So, I think they can expect a significant amount of funding. I mean, there’s $50m that I expect will be allocated at that meeting. But a lot of it has to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the wild poliovirus is still endemic, but I think there will be a significant tranche.
“There will be a significant tranche of funds, maybe not tens of millions; I don’t think it will be that big, but a significant amount of money allocated to Nigeria.
“I know that there are four states, the AIT states, and now the AIT plus one state, where most of these cases are. The states of Sokoto, Kebbi, Kastina, Zamfara, and Kano.
“We’re working and $2m has already been allocated, and that project is underway in the Program of Scale for Healthy Families in Nigeria. What we are looking to do is decrease the rate of mortality in births in this country, and it is operating now in several districts.
“You know, one way that the mortality rate can be decreased is for more births to happen in a healthcare facility rather than at home. And we have seen in the first year of the program significant increases in the percentages of births happening in medical facilities.
Also speaking, the past district governor and chairman of the Nigeria National Polio Plus Committee, Joshua Hassan, said the Rotary Club is concentrating on five states in the Northwest region, which he said have predominant cases of polio type 2 variant.
“As of December, we have gotten 92 cases in which they are treated. Anytime a case is discovered in the place, you do what we call Outbreak Response Immunization. You do that two or three times and do that just in that area and the surrounding state.
“Now the national immunization days, which they are planning to have two in the year, that will be the whole country. So, as of now, we are concentrating on what we call the AIT plus one state. That is Kano; you have Zamfara, Kastina, Kebbi, and Sokoto. That is where this case is predominant; it’s a health issue.”
Rotary Commits $300m To Fight Polio In Nigeria is first published on The Whistler Newspaper
