Nigerian health authorities scrambled Friday to organize the first polio immunization campaign in nearly a year in a heavily Muslim Nigerian state where a recent vaccination ban has allowed the potentially crippling disease to mushroom, reports the World Bank press review Monday.
Kano state forbade polio vaccinations for 11 months while it investigated rumors that UN-regulated vaccines were tainted by contaminants causing AIDS or infertility in Muslims. Since Kano suspended vaccinations last August, the ban has set back a 15-year global campaign to eliminate the disease by 2005, according to UN health officials.
Polio has spread to more than 10 other African countries where it was previously thought to have been eradicated. In Nigeria, more than 364 children have been infected with polio from January to mid-July, a figure accounting for more than 80 percent of the 444 cases worldwide, according to UN World Health Organization officials.
Of those, Kano has at least 112 cases – one-third of the Nigerian total. To help restore public confidence in the campaign, Governor Ibrahim Shekarau will kick off the immunization campaign on July 29 by giving the vaccine drops to his two-month-old daughter, said Sani Jubril, another state health official.
For five days from July 29 health workers will try to reach the four million under-fives who were put at risk of lifelong disability by Kanos refusal to allow them to vaccinate against the virus, Kano and UNICEF officials said.
At the same time, UNICEF announced that the latest figures on the outbreak showed that the west African giant now accounts for more than four fifths of the worlds polio cases after active infections jumped 40 percent in a month.
The UN childrens agency UNICEF, which is taking part in the exercise, welcomed the decision and confirmed the July 29 start date. Only a small hard-line Islamic faction has maintained its opposition to the vaccination, accusing the government of backing down in the face of international pressure and putting Muslims at risk.
But many imams and local leaders have said they will support the renewed inoculation drive, along with a group which know the dangers of polio better than anyone else: Kanos 700-strong association of the disabled.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
