Time to break out the champagne for this tremendous accomplishment!
And all thanks to vaccines and the effort of local health care workers helping get it delivered and administered to the most remote villages time and time again until it was stamped out. There's still more to be done, but this is huge.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced that the entire African continent has been free of wild polio cases for the past year, thanks to a dedicated vaccine campaign.
This means that no one has been infected with the virus anywhere in Africa since the last reported case in central Somalia on 11 August 2014, and it suggests that public health officials have successfully treated enough people with the oral vaccine to interrupt the spread of polio in Africa once and for all.
Unfortunately the announcement doesn’t mean that Africa is free from polio altogether – there are still people infected, and the virus remains officially endemic in Nigeria.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
