Performance of Acute Flaccid Paralysis surveillance in Bauchi State, Nigeria, 2016

Introduction Poliomyelitis a disease targeted for eradication since 19881 still pose public health challenge. The Eastern Mediterranean and African Regions out of the six World Health Organization (WHO) Regions are yet to be certified polio free2. The certification of the WHO Africa region is largely dependent on Nigeria, while the WHO Eastern Mediterranean is dependent on Pakistan and Afghanistan. Surveillance for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) is one of the critical elements of the polio eradication initiative. It provides the needed information to alert health managers and clinician to timely initiate actions to interrupt transmission of the polio disease and evidence for the absence of the wild polio virus.3,4 One of the core assignments of the certification committee in all regions is to review documentation to verify the absence of wild poliovirus.5 Good and complete documentation is the proxy indication of the quality of the system while poor documentation translates to possibilities of missing wild poliovirus in the past. We evaluated the performance of the AFP surveillance system in Bauchi, which is among the 11 high risks states for wild polio virus in Nigeria to identify and address gaps in the surveillance system.