--- title: CDC Africa Nears Polio Eradication After Nigeria Vaccination Campaigns description: Vaccination efforts in northern Nigeria have nearly eradicated polio from Africa, the CDC revealed Thursday canonical: https://time.com/3597557/africa-polio-eradication-cdc/ author: Dan Kedmey article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-20T19:00:12.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:19.452Z article:section: Health og:title: Africa Nears Polio Eradication, CDC Says og:description: Health officials credit successful vaccination efforts in Nigeria og:url: https://time.com/3597557/africa-polio-eradication-cdc/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta2ceed4441fdd428/69876a02a988ca097b6aadef/africa-polio-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2500 og:image:height: 1406 og:image:alt: German Minister Mueller Travels Nigeria og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Africa Nears Polio Eradication, CDC Says twitter:description: Health officials credit successful vaccination efforts in Nigeria twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta2ceed4441fdd428/69876a02a988ca097b6aadef/africa-polio-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Africa Nears Polio Eradication, CDC Says > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=173cf1bd-8792-4090-8881-e077f495c6d0&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2014-08-13. Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola_  by [Dan Kedmey](https://time.com/author/dan-kedmey/)  ## Dan Kedmey Nov 20, 2014 7:00 PM UTC  German Development Minister Gerd Mueller vaccinates a child against polio in a hospital on June 11, 2014 in Abeokuta, Nigeria. German Development Minister Gerd Mueller vaccinates a child against polio in a hospital on June 11, 2014 in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Thomas Imo—Getty Images  by [Dan Kedmey](https://time.com/author/dan-kedmey/)  ## Dan Kedmey Nov 20, 2014 7:00 PM UTC **Correction appended, November 21, 2014** Wild poliovirus has nearly been eradicated in Africa thanks to successful vaccination efforts in Nigeria, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed in a new report Thursday. No case of polio has been recorded on the continent since August, the report finds. There have been 22 cases of polio in Africa overall since the beginning of 2014, six of which were in Nigeria, one of the last three endemic nations alongside Pakistan and Afghanistan. The latest tally marked a drastic reduction from 49 cases in Nigeria the previous year. That drop has been credited to vaccination campaigns in the country’s restive northern states, where a decade of periodic outbreaks had reintroduced the virus to 26 polio-free countries. “Interrupting all poliovirus circulation in Nigeria is achievable,” the report finds, but only with expanded vaccination coverage to some of the region’s most remote and hard-to-reach communities. _Correction: The original version of this article misstated the total number of polio cases across Africa and how many countries were affected. There were 22 cases in Africa since the beginning of 2014 and the virus was reintroduced to 26 polio-free countries since 2003._ ## Transcript This Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. This is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The bugs have evolved. The outbreak has gotten bigger. We are only as strong as the weakest link, and we have learned from Ebola that West Africa was a very weak link. [ MUSIC ] There's small clinics, these are like one room places where sick people might go in their house with maybe an auxiliary nurse as some one who has a little bit of medical training, but defiantly not the same standards that we would have here in the US. We're facing 3 main threats. The first is the threat of new organisms. It was coming and spreading in different places. The second is drug- resistant bacteria, and the third are intentionally created organisms. What we do in an outbreak response is continuously see how can we make it better. The exercises we've gone through both, re- evaluating our own protocols but also understanding what the public and governmental responses are has really helped us understand. How to take care of these patients in the larger context of our healthcare systems. And, those who are in the building, I would urge you to come down to either the ops team room, or the, When designing a unit that is designed to accept patients with serious communicable diseases, like Ebola, there are ways to design a unit so that it's function. Functional. Any hospital that can isolate a patient in a single patient room with a bathroom and can follow our infection control recommendations is capable of safely caring for a patient with Ebola. And we've tried to encourage every single hospital in the country to have an antibiotic stewardship program to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. There is a concern about fatigue as we go on that, the CDC other groups have sort of ramping up now to try to surge resources into the area. What we're also realizing is, we need to be able to maintain that surge for many months to keep the pressure on to completely control the outbreak. Time will tell in the next few weeks if we can start to see those numbers going in the right direction. Fewer new cases each day or each week. The single most important thing to understand about protecting Americans from Ebola is that can best be done by stopping it at the source in Africa. Its normal to be scared of something as deadly as Ebola and for the general public I really hope we can never let our fear undermine our compassion. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3597557/africa-polio-eradication-cdc/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3597557/africa-polio-eradication-cdc/"},"headline":"Africa Nears Polio Eradication, CDC Says","datePublished":"2014-11-20T19:00:12.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:00:19.452Z","description":"Health officials credit successful vaccination efforts in Nigeria","url":"https://time.com/3597557/africa-polio-eradication-cdc/","keywords":["Infectious Disease","polio"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta2ceed4441fdd428/69876a02a988ca097b6aadef/africa-polio-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Dan Kedmey","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/dan-kedmey/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta2ceed4441fdd428/69876a02a988ca097b6aadef/africa-polio-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"German Minister Mueller Travels Nigeria","caption":"German Minister Mueller Travels Nigeria","creditText":"Thomas Imo—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/infectious-disease/","name":"Infectious Disease"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3597557/africa-polio-eradication-cdc/","name":"Africa Nears Polio Eradication, CDC Says"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","description":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G194AmTC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-13T23:41:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3597557/africa-polio-eradication-cdc/","duration":"PT2M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3597557/africa-polio-eradication-cdc/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```