By Benjamin Mensah, GNA
Accra, Oct. 23, GNA- A group of Rotarians in Ghana have gone a step further from financing polio surveillance to witnessing laboratory activities towards polio surveillance at the National Polio Centre, Legon, in Accra.
The Rotarians were members of the Ghana National PolioPlus Committee (GNPCC) Rotary-led action group dedicated to eradicating poliomyelitis in Ghana, and working in partnership with Rotary International, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Children’s’ Fund (UNICEF) and the Ghana Health Service.
Members of the GNPPC and the Ghana’s youth and student version of Rotary, Rotaractors, visited the polio lab of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) of the University of Ghana, Legon.
Led by Dr. Jack Andrews Dotsey, the District Governor of Rotary International District 9104 for 2026–2027, the visitors, under the umbrella of Rotary, an international service organisation, interacted with researchers at the laboratories and offices of the National Polio Reference Laboratory, at the NMIMR, Legon.
The visit came ahead of the celebration of this year’s World Polio Day to be celebrated on Saturday, October 24, 2026, was to learn more about the monitoring and evaluation of polio.
World Polio Day was established in 1985 by Rotary International to commemorate the birth of Dr. Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop an inactivated poliovirus vaccine.
The members, sporting red tee shirts, with the inscription “End Polio Now” on them could not hide their joy as the research institute acknowledged the Rotary International and the Rotary in Ghana (District 9104) for its assistance toward polio surveillance and eradication in Ghana.
Professor Dorothy Kyerewah Yeboah-Manu, the Director of the NMIMR, commended the collaboration between Rotary and the Institute, which she said had helped the institute grow.
The Institute, she said, had been part of the polio eradication efforts for almost 48 years, and it continued to receive samples from Ghana and other parts of West Africa.
Prof. Yeboah-Manu called for better waste water treatment practices as infected people (including those with no symptoms) or individuals who received the live oral polio vaccine (OPV) shed the virus in their stool.
She explained that wastewater surveillance acted as an early warning system to detect poliovirus in communities before any clinical cases or paralysis appeared.
“Let’s practice infection control; let’s protect our sewage systems,” Prof Yeboah-Manu advised.
The Director of the NMIMR appealed for support for the National Polio Centre, explaining that activities undertaken there were capital intensive.
Dr Dotsey, for his part, also assured of Rotary’s continued partnership with the Centre.
Dr Raymond Dankoli, the Coordinator for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), stressed continuous surveillance to address emerging strains of the polio virus.
Polio (poliomyelitis) is a contagious, life-threatening viral disease caused by the poliovirus. It attacks the nervous system, specifically damaging motor neurons in the spinal cord, which can lead to permanent muscle weakness, irreversible paralysis, or death.
The virus enters the mouth through food, water, or hands contaminated with the stool of an infected person.
It can also spread less frequently via saliva or respiratory droplets. While it mainly targets unvaccinated children under the age of five, anyone who lacks immunity can contract it
Most people infected (about 70% to 75%) show no visible symptoms. About 25% experience flu-like signs, such as fever, fatigue, sore throat, headache, and stomach pain.
With paralytic polio, in one to five per cent of cases, the virus invades the brain and spinal cord, causing muscle weakness, sharp pain, and permanent paralysis.
If paralysis reaches the muscles that control breathing, it can become fatal.
Decades after recovery, some survivors develop new progressive muscle weakness and pain.
Ghana, since 2015, is free of the wild poliovirus, having attained wild polio-free status maintaining it for over 15 years.
However, the country has faced occasional outbreaks of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2), most recently prompting nationwide immunisation campaigns such as the novel Oral Polio Vaccine (nOPV2) drives managed by the Ghana Health Service and the World Health Organisation.
Ghana has experienced periodic flare-ups of vaccine-derived strains (including outbreaks in 2019, 2022, and follow-up response campaigns through late 2024), leading health authorities to periodically close or manage active outbreak events.
Routine childhood immunisations and supplementary immunisation activities (SIAs) using the novel Oral Polio Vaccine Type 2 (nOPV2) continue nationwide to protect children under five.
GNA
Edited by Linda Asante Agyei
23 October 2026
Reporter: Benjamin Mensah
Email address: [email protected]