Africa is now officially polio-free after more than two decades of immunisation programs dedicated to fighting the disease.
On Tuesday the Africa Regional Certification Commission made the declaration following three years of no recorded cases of wild polio.
There is no cure for polio but vaccinations have proven effective at combating the disease - 95 percent of Africa has now been immunised against it.
The last case of wild polio was in Nigeria in 2016.
All that remains now is vaccine-derived polio - a rare form of the virus that mutates from the polio vaccine and can then spread to under-immunised communities.
There have been 177 cases of this recorded this year, reports the BBC.
The fight to eradicate polio began in 1996 when South African President Nelson Mandela launched a campaign to vaccinate as many children in Africa as possible.
Since then billions of vaccines have been provided, stopping an estimated 1.8 million cases.
Polio mostly affects children under five, causing paralysis. The virus spreads from person to person, usually through contaminated water and it can be fatal if the paralysis spreads to the lungs.
Two out of the three strains of polio have been eradicated worldwide.
Type 2 wild poliovirus was declared eradicated in September 2015, according to the Centre for Disease Control, with the last virus detected in India in 1999. Type 3 wild poliovirus was declared eradicated in October 2019. It was last detected in November 2012. Only type 1 wild poliovirus remains, with the only recorded cases being in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
