Nigeria Receives $300m for Polio Eradication.

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Rotary International Foundation has committed over $300 million to support polio eradication efforts in Nigeria. Mark Maloney, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, disclosed this during a symbolic polio immunization exercise at the Jahi Primary Healthcare Centre in Abuja.

Maloney stated that the foundation has been working tirelessly to support polio eradication efforts in Nigeria.

“We have committed, over the course of many years, over $300 million to polio eradication in Nigeria alone,” he said. “And we are pleased to work with the Nigeria National Polio Plus Committee, and we are very pleased with the work that they are doing.”

Nigeria was declared wild poliovirus-free in 2020, but the country still faces challenges with the continuation of variant polio type 2. 

“The Nigerian government is facing a significant challenge with the continuation of variant polio type 2, and we’ve seen so far about 92 cases through the cases that have been evaluated in 2024,” Maloney said.

He emphasized the need for sustained government focus on polio eradication. “Rotary can only do so much. We are a private organization, but we encourage the government to redouble their efforts to put the focus on polio eradication as they did with the wild poliovirus, and they were successful, such that I think the last case occurred in 2016, and along with the rest of Africa, Nigeria was declared wild poliovirus free in 2020. Now, we need to work on this variant of polio.”

Maloney also noted that the government has a polio accountability program, which Rotary applauds. However, he hopes to see a continued focus on polio eradication. 

“I know that there’s great pressure to work on many different health areas, but if we can succeed in getting these last few cases of variant polio finished, then the government won’t have to worry about polio in their health program.”

Regarding Rotary’s funding for polio eradication efforts in Nigeria, Maloney said that the exact amount for 2025 is yet to be determined. However, he expects a significant tranche of funds to be allocated.

“There’s $50 million that I expect will be allocated at that meeting, but a lot of it has to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where wild polio virus is still endemic. But I think there will be a significant tranche of funds, maybe not tens of millions; I don’t think it will be that big, but a significant amount of money allocated to Nigeria.”

In addition to it’s polio eradication efforts, Rotary International has also allocated $2 million for a maternal and child care project called the “Programme of Scale” to reduce birth-related mortality in Nigeria. Maloney said that the project aims to decrease the mortality rate by increasing the number of births in healthcare facilities. “What we are looking to do is to decrease the rate of mortality in births in this country, and it is operating now in several districts. One way that the mortality rate can be decreased is for more births to happen in a healthcare facility rather than at home.”

Maloney noted that the project has seen significant increases in the percentages of births happening in medical facilities. “We have seen, in the first year of the program, significant increases in the percentages of births happening in medical facilities. One district had gone from 11 percent in medical facilities to 33 percent, which is a significant increase.”

“I don’t think we’ve had enough time to actually measure the mortality rate to see the impact on that. But we are seeing an increase in the number of births happening in medical facilities,” Maloney said.

Joshua Hassan, a past district governor and chairman of the Nigeria National Polio Plus Committee, noted that focused efforts are currently on Kano, Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi, and Sokoto states. Hassan stated that in response to the vaccine-derived variant, outbreak immunization efforts are conducted locally, with national immunization days planned twice a year for the entire country.

Prof Emmanuel Lufadeju, the National Coordinator, Together for Healthy Families in Nigeria, highlighted that the Programme of Scale project is designed to reduce maternal mortality among women by 25 percent. “We are going to do something that is called a social, behavioral change to change the attitude of people and make them deliver in the facility instead of delivering at home,” Lufadeju stated.

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