Marking a year without polio
Once stigmatized as the world’s polio epicenter, Nigeria celebrated its first year with no reported case of the crippling disease, having overcome obstacles varying from Islamic extremists who assassinated vaccinators to rumors that the vaccine was a plot to sterilize Muslims.
Just 20 years ago this West African nation was recording 1,000 polio cases a year, the most in the world.
The last recorded case of a child paralyzed by the wild polio virus that is endemic in Nigeria’s impoverished and mainly Muslim north was July 24, 2014.