UNICEF raises polio alert in Niger, detects five cases

….Three human infections, two environmental samples identified in Bida, Chanchaga

By Clare Nnabuike, Minna

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has raised the alarm over the detection of five polio cases in Niger State, urging residents to intensify surveillance and ensure that children receive routine immunisation against the disease.

The five detections comprised three cases identified through human samples and two through environmental surveillance in Bida and Chanchaga Local Government Areas of the state.

UNICEF called on residents, parents and community leaders to support vaccination campaigns and sensitisation efforts to prevent further spread of the virus and achieve a polio-free environment.

The agency raised the alarm on Wednesday during a mass mobilisation dialogue organised in collaboration with the Niger State Primary Health Care Development Agency.

Speaking at the event in Minna, UNICEF’s representative in Niger State, Mrs Grace Odeyemi, urged residents to strengthen disease surveillance and community engagement, particularly in the affected local government areas.

She stressed the need for parents to ensure that their children received polio vaccines, describing immunisation as essential to preventing the disease.

Odeyemi explained that health officials routinely monitored children with paralysis or symptoms resembling those of polio victims, collecting samples for laboratory testing to establish the actual cause.

She said surveillance also involved environmental sampling to detect the virus even when no infected individual had been identified.

“We still carry out routine immunisation of the population. We are vaccinating the children to ensure that we eradicate the disease from the state.

“We sample humans, that is, any child that we find in the community with paralysis, having a similar feature of polio-affected victims.

“We quickly notify our local surveillance officers to collect samples for tests to see if it is polio or something else that is actually causing the paralysis because it’s not only polio virus that causes paralysis,” she said.

She disclosed that the virus had been detected through both human and environmental surveillance in Chanchaga and Bida, bringing the total detections in the state to five.

The Niger State Immunisation Officer, Abubakar Usman, said routine and emergency vaccination exercises had been intensified to protect children in the affected communities.

He disclosed that reactive vaccination had been conducted in areas where the virus was detected to prevent further transmission.

Usman said the agency had also embarked on community engagement involving traditional leaders and other intervention groups to educate residents on the dangers of rejecting immunisation.

He attributed the detections largely to poor routine immunisation coverage and non-compliance by some parents and caregivers.

“The virus was detected in the state. We found three from human and two from environmental sampling, and a lot of strategies have been put in place to curtail the spread of these diseases.

“We did reactive vaccination, that is, we promptly reacted to vaccinate other children within those areas where those viruses were actually found,” he said.

Usman warned that resistance to vaccination could expose more children to the disease, urging communities to cooperate with health officials during immunisation campaigns.

He added that community sensitisation remained critical to addressing vaccine hesitancy and improving routine immunisation coverage across the state.