Clerics halt Nigeria polio drive

[Guest guest]

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/3216329.stm

 

Published: 2003/10/26 22:07:19 GMT

 

Clerics halt Nigeria polio drive

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Nigeria has halted an emergency polio immunisation drive by the World

Health Organisation after an Islamic leader declared the vaccines unsafe.

 

Datti Ahmed told the BBC that reports on the internet suggested the

vaccines might be contaminated with viruses causing cancer, Aids or sterility.

 

The WHO rejects the charges, saying the vaccines are entirely safe.

 

Nigeria, which has the world's highest number of cases, poses a threat to

the region.

 

Secret plan

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The WHO launched its campaign last week in a bid to immunise more than 15

million children in west and central Africa against polio.

 

The new danger stems from Nigeria, which accounts for nearly half of all

polio cases in the world.

 

But three predominantly Muslim states in northern Nigeria - Kano, Kaduna

and Zamfara, have delayed or refused permission following opposition from

influential Islamic leaders who allege the oral vaccination is unsafe and

part of a secret US plan against Africa.

 

Datti Ahmed, who is both a medical doctor and the president of Nigeria's

Supreme Council for Sharia law, said they needed to check reports that the

vaccine was contaminated.

 

" There were strong reasons to believe that the polio immunisation vaccine

was contaminated with anti-fertility drugs, contaminated with certain virus

that cause HIV/Aids, contaminated with Simian virus that are likely to

cause cancers, " he told the BBC World Service's Newshour programme.

 

Rumours have been circulating in northern Nigeria that the vaccine is part

of a US plot to limit the country's population by spreading Aids and

rendering people infertile.

 

When asked about such reports, Dr Ahmed said they might sound insane but

they had to be checked out.

 

Regional threat

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The head of the WHO's polio campaign, David Heymann, told the BBC that the

vaccines used in Nigeria are no different from those used to combat polio

everywhere else in the world.

 

With the take-up of vaccines so low in northern Nigeria, polio was taking

firm hold, Mr Heymann warned.

 

" They are spreading it ...into the central Nigerian states and even into

Lagos, and in addition to five neighbouring countries, which are polio-free. "

 

These countries were now, at great cost, having to build a wall of immunity

around the imported cases, he said.

 

Hundreds of thousands of health workers and volunteers have been mobilised

across the region to treat millions of children.

 

Already new polio cases have identified in Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana

and Chad.

 

The latest crisis threatens to undermine a global initiative to eradicate

the crippling disease by the end of 2004.

 

Poliomyelitis is an acute viral infection which mainly affects children and

can be spread by simple physical contact.

 

It causes permanent paralysis and other forms of physical disability in

many of its victims.

 

 

 

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