Rejection of Polio vaccines has no doubt left a painful mark of permanent disability in many homes of Northern Nigeria, even as the World Health Organisation (WHO) last week declared Nigeria Polio-free. ABDULGAFAR ALABELEWE writes on the pains of Polio survivors and how the campaign for immunisation vaccines saved millions of other children.
The life of Talatu Abubakar, mother of six children, turned upside down 20 years ago. The change was unplanned and unexpected and at the end of it, her two-year-old son, Saidu Abubakar, was down, paralysed from waist to his legs.
Saidu, now 22 years old, has never walked with his legs, has never been to a conventional school and his only ambition is to become an Islamic teacher.
The event that led to his paralysis began on the evening of a cool and breezy day.
“That time, he was two-years-old, one day he went outside to play as usual, but when he returned in the evening, he developed fever, that type of high fever. We started treating him for fever that night. Then, the following day, he looked like he was already recovering and I was happy,” Mrs. Abubakar began in a voice laced with sad memories.
“Suddenly, I discovered that when he attempted to stand he fell, he tried several times and fell back as many times as he tried. Then, my neighbours concluded that he was falling because he was still weak due to fever. Then, we bought drugs for him again and continued treating the fever.
“Then, that night, he started fainting; he fainted several times till the following morning. We were putting a spoon in his mouth as he was fainting to prevent him from griping his teeth together; they said if a child faints and his teeth are allowed to grip together, the child can die.
“Later that morning, he became stable and that he could talk and invite other children to play with him, but he could not stand not to talk of moving; he could not even sit down on his own. When we discovered that his situation was not getting better, we started taking him to the hospital.
Mrs Abubakar believed a djin or evil spirit had taken possession of her son; in her community, this is the only explanation for such a sudden and unprecedented sickness resulting in the inability to walk or stand.
She said: “We thought it was a minor case, but after our several visits to the hospital, they started doing physiotherapy for him. They started teaching him how to sit down all over again; they would put pillows by his sides, at the back and front. We were going until he could sit down on his own. From there, he started moving, but in sitting position.
“We were to go into another round, which was to teach his how to stand, then we exhausted our money and stopped going to the hospital.
“Maybe he would have been able to walk again if we had money to continue the physiotherapy, because, at the hospital, they told us he was not possessed by an evil spirit. Initially, we didn’t believe, but when they did and he could sit down on his own, we believed it was a medical case and not spiritual.”
Polio immunisation officials were to later visit the family and they told Mrs Abubakar that Saidu was affected by the poliovirus and a vaccine would have saved him from a lifetime of paralysis if he had been vaccinated.
Though that incident scarred Saidu for life, it was a saviour for his siblings who were all vaccinated against the poliovirus. It also turned Mrs Abubakar into a lifelong advocate for the vaccination of children against the poliovirus.
It was a brave thing to do Poliomyelitis and child killer diseases like meningitis and measles had for decades posed serious dangers to the survival of the Nigeria child, but even though the discovery of vaccines has saved millions of children from mortality and permanent disability.
The situation was different in Northern Nigeria, children vaccination was received with a lot of misconception, mischief and even outright rejection in many communities, a situation which led to uncountable child mortality and permanent disability in others.
Until the intervention of traditional, religious and political leaders among other stakeholders who mounted a campaign for immunisation, rejection of vaccines, especially against polio, had left many crippled in several communities in Kaduna State. From Igabi to Ikara, Zaria to Kaduna South, Sabon Gari to Birnin-Gwari, polio has its victims permanently disabled and denied many life opportunities.
In Igabi Local Government Area of the State, parents, who had hitherto rejected immunisation vaccines for their children, now campaign for vaccines, having seen the many results of rejection roaming the street on wheelchairs.
“Immunisation vaccine is very important and very good,” Mrs Abubakar said with conviction. It was a faith that has been built from personal tragedy and 20 years’ experience. “It is very important because it prevents children from being infected by disease; it is one of the important steps in healthcare. Therefore, I urge other parents to always present their children for immunisation; I don’t want any mother to go through what I passed through with Saidu’s condition,” she added.
Last week, Nigeria became the last country in Africa to eradicate the Poliovirus. After decades of the campaign, the world finally was able to develop a vaccine that would prevent poliovirus. In 1988, the World Health Assembly took a resolution to eradicate polio but the work would have been impossible without partners one of which was Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
Founded in 2000 to “save lives, reduce poverty and protect the world against the threat of epidemics,” Gavi has helped to immunize 760 million children and has saved more than 13 million lives, it said in a statement.
On June 4, Gavi received another lifeline, this time from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) a five-year $1.6billion commitment to deliver lifesaving vaccines to the world’s poorest countries.
The funding secured would help Gavi reach an additional 300 million children in the world’s most vulnerable communities and save up to eight million lives bringing to total one billion children immunised since 2000 by Gavi.
“Not many people outside the global health sector have heard about Gavi, but over the past twenty years, it has transformed the way the world invests in and protects the health of its children, if the current pandemic has reminded us of anything, it’s the importance of vaccinating against deadly diseases. The pledges that leaders are making today will help Gavi save even more lives,” said Melinda Gates, the Co-Chair of BMGF.
Unlike Saidu, Thalisu Yakubu of Ungwan Sanusi in Kaduna South Local Government Area has completed his secondary education and aspires to become a computer scientist.
Yakubu remembers when and how he became paralysed by Polio. Now, 19-years-old, he has learnt iron fabrication and now produces wheelchairs for other polio survivors.
He said: “I was five when I became crippled. I was already growing up, I could go out, play with my friends, run around the neighbourhood. Suddenly, I fell sick, I was told it was malaria, and just like every other sick child, my parents were hopeful that I was going to get up. But unfortunately, from that sickness, I could no longer stand on my feet, except they lift me. I remember, vividly, my parents would tell me, please don’t engage in expensive joke, they would lift me on my feet, and I will fall back on the ground.
“When, they discovered that, I could no longer stand or walk, they took me to different hospitals, before they were told I was infected by the Polio Virus. Even after that, they didn’t give up. They treated me and ensured I was well, but the damaged had already been done; I was already crippled by the virus.
“Since then, my parents never joke with immunisation, all my siblings are hale and hearty, and none of them was infected by Polio.”
Flattening the Polio curve
Deputy Director in the State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Hamza Ibrahim Ikara, shared with The Nation how the state launched and executed a successful campaign against Wild Polio Virus (WPV) with immunisation vaccine, as Kaduna was among the Polio high-risk states in Nigeria.
He said a task force which had the deputy governor, local government chairmen, traditional and religious leaders as members helped to flatten the curve of the virus.
According to him, “Kaduna was among the high-risk states in the country in terms of the outbreak of Poliomyelitis. Ten years back, Kaduna had very rampant cases of Polio. If you remember in 2012 from January to October, we had 16 cases of Wild Polio Virus. The situation became worrisome to the State and it led to the establishment of Kaduna State Task Force on Polio Eradication, which was headed by the deputy governor at that time.
“The Task Force included all the 23 traditional leader’s domain. The committees were designed to mobilised communities to understand the risks their children were faced with, and everyone was convinced to participate actively so that, the campaign could be mounted collectively for the benefit of our future generation because when the children are immunised, they will grow normally will all their four limbs, study and play normally.
“Though it was not as easy as I am narrating to you now, we faced a lot of challenges, we faced a lot of resistance and non-compliance. At a point, we had to ask our respective state government to enact laws against parents who refused to bring out their children for immunisation but at the end of the day, we succeeded, and today, Nigeria is Polio free.
“The misconception that vaccines were designed to reduce the population of the north and Muslims was one of those challenges we faced. But, the religious leaders had to go closer to those have such misconception and persuaded them, it was difficult, but at the end of the day, those people were convinced. They were convinced with several cases of people who took immunization vaccines and had given birth to twins and triplets. The polio vaccine, as far as I know, does not have any family planning effect on the people who took it.
“Some communities rejected the vaccine due to political reasons. Some politicians were misleading their followers that since they didn’t have electricity in their communities why should they accept the polio vaccine? That, they didn’t have potable water, why won’t the government bring water instead of the vaccine? So, this again made some communities to reject the polio vaccine.
“Before our intervention, the situation of Polio was very bad in Kaduna State and entire Northern Nigeria; the coverage was as low as 10 to 15 per cent. It improved gradually after our intervention to 30 per cent, from 30 to 50 per cent. It stayed on 50 per cent for like a year or two, before it moved to 80, 85 per cent and finally to almost 100 per cent and today Nigeria has been declared polio-free.”
A religious leader in Ikara Local Government Area, Malam Usman Abdullahi Ikara, said though he was among those who had some suspicion about vaccines, studies by medical experts who are religious leaders in their rights, made him embrace the campaign for Polio vaccine.
Malam Dalhat Sabiu Muhammad is one of those polio survivors turned immunisation champions. He said they use themselves as examples of what can become of children if they are not vaccinated against polio.
Muhammad, who was crippled by polio, combated his challenge and rose to become a classroom teacher, after struggling through education to obtain a National Certificate in Education (NCE).
“I am even a champion of immunisation, I am among the polio survivors selected by the World Health Organisation (WHO). We do go out with them on enlightenment campaign to talk to people about the importance of immunisation vaccines. We use ourselves as examples to parents, that we are victims of polio and we don’t want children to be crippled like us,” Muhammad said.
For Yakubu and Saidu, Gavi might have been too late to save them, but for millions more of Nigerian children, the vaccines that Gavi supports might just be the life-saver from epidemics and other childhood diseases.