WHO honours Professor Nkrumah and two others for their contribution towards polio eradication
The World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday honoured Professor Francis Kwesi Nkrumah for his efforts towards the eradication of polio in Ghana and the African region.
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For more than 15 years, Prof. Nkrumah, a consultant paediatrician, served at both regional and national levels on relevant bodies that worked towards the achievement of a polio-free status.
Until his resignation this year, he had been the Chairman of the National Polio Expert Committee since 2001.
At a brief ceremony in Accra, Prof. Nkrumah received a personal citation from the WHO Regional Director, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, and three plaques from the WHO Regional Office, the WHO Ghana Office and the African Region of Certification Commission (ARCC) for playing an increasingly critical role in ensuring that Ghana and Africa won the fight against polio.
Two other personalities — Prof. Julius Mingle and Dr Fred Wurapa — were also honoured by the WHO Ghana Office for distinguishing themselves and contributing to polio eradication initiatives in Ghana.
Prof. Mingle served as the Chairman of the National Task Force on Contamination (NTF) which occasionally conducts containment assessment of all laboratories in the country to ensure that no private or public laboratory harbours any infectious materials that are potential of polio virus infection.
Dr Wurapa was the Chairman of the five-member National Certification Committee (NCC) which conducts monitoring and advocacy visits to poor performing regions, holds quarterly meetings to review surveillance indicators and works towards polio-free certification.
Commendation
Before presenting the awards, the Country Director of the WHO Ghana Office, Dr Owen Kaluwa, commended Prof. Nkrumah, Prof. Mingle and Dr Wurapa for their selfless and dedicated service to the eradication of polio.
Polio eradication, he said, began globally after a resolution adopted during the 41st World Health Assembly meeting in May 1988 called on all countries to eradicate polio by 2005.
The eradication initiative in Ghana, he said, began in 1996, leading to the interruption of the transmission of the wild polio virus in 2003.
Ghana, he said, subsequently submitted documentation to the ARCC in 2007 for the recognition of the polio-free status.
However, Mr Kaluwa said, barely one year later, there was an outbreak of polio in Ghana again and it took the commitment of the government, with support from other partners, to interrupt the transmission of the polio virus “and Ghana has remained polio free by WHO criteria since November 2008”.
Polio eradication
An immunisation officer of the WHO, Mr Stanley Diamenu, said Ghana, with support from the WHO, UNICEF, the Rotary Club, civil society organisations and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints conducted 45 mass polio vaccination campaigns throughout the country in a house-to-house strategy from 1996 to 2015 to accelerate the eradication process.
During the mass vaccination campaigns, he said, 195,000,000 doses of the oral polio vaccine were administered to children aged between zero and 59 months.
He said although Ghana had recorded a national coverage of 90 per cent in the routine oral polio vaccination, there were two urban districts with coverage as low as 50 per cent.
“This is worrying. We are calling on all caregivers to continue to send their wards and children to vaccination centres to get them immunised and protected against polio,” he said.
Privilege
In a response, Prof. Nkrumah expressed his gratitude to the WHO Africa Regional Office and explained that he decided to step down from the committees on which he served because he was advancing in age, “so that I could be replaced with new blood”.
He stated that it was a “privilege to serve at both national and regional levels on relevant bodies aimed at ending polio in Ghana and in Africa”.
Later in a video clip, the WHO Regional Director, Dr Moeti; a former Director of Immunisation at the WHO Africa Office, Dr Dero Nshimirimah, and the Chairperson of the ARCC, Prof. Rose Leke, praised Prof. Nkrumah for his relentless efforts and commitment to the fight against polio in Africa and the elimination of the disease in Ghana and beyond.
Dr Wurapa and Prof. Mingle, after stating that they were honoured to have been recognised by the WHO Ghana Country Office, acknowledged the importance of collaborative efforts to achieving the polio-free status.