Dealing with National Health Emergencies in Nigeria

n 2012, after a national vaccine rollout programme had suffered years of setbacks, President Goodluck Jonathan declared polio as a national health emergency in Nigeria. By 2020, increased efforts to eradicate polio had resulted in Nigeria finally being declared free of the virus. ‘Polio is no longer endemic in Nigeria,’ the World Health Organization announced. But in 2020, too, however, the Buhari administration declared another national health emergency: COVID-19.

By March 2020, a presidential task force had been set up to handle Nigeria’s COVID-19 response and plan for a vaccine roll-out. The task force had the ambitious aim of vaccinating 40 per cent of the eligible population against COVID-19 by the end of 2021, and 70 per cent before the end of 2022. With the new COVID-19 health emergency underway, a closer look at what made the polio vaccine roll-out successful can help suggest possible strategies for Nigeria’s COVID-19 vaccinations.

KEY PARTNERSHIPS

Great strides in disease eradication typically begin with effective international and local partnerships, because healthcare partnerships play a significant role in disease management and eradication around the world. In the eradication of polio in Nigeria, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a global coalition of national governments and several humanitarian organizations, proved to be the most instrumental partnership.

Polio eradication efforts began in Nigeria as early as 1996. From the onset, the GPEI led the funding, procurement and supply of vaccines, strengthened by partners such as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and Rotary International. In later years, the presidential task force on polio eradication led efforts to distribute vaccines by working with agencies such as the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), state governments’ polio task forces and community stakeholder groups such as the Traditional Leaders Committee on Primary Health Care and the Nigerian Inter-Faith Group. During the 24-year journey to eradicate polio, this network of partners helped to create polio eradication initiatives, emergency plans, expert review committees, outbreak response assessment teams and other strategic initiatives, before finally achieving the goal of eradication in 2020.