Global polio eradication back on track
18 May 2004 NewScientist.com news service
The bid to banish polio from the world may be back on track, as a state in Nigeria which banned polio immunisation now says it will source the vaccine from Indonesia.
The state of Kano, in northern Nigeria, suspended the polio mass immunisation campaign in October 2003, amid local claims that the vaccine was contaminated with anti-fertility hormones and HIV.
Muslim clerics claimed the vaccine was part of a Western plot to depopulate Africa. Subsequent tests by Nigerian experts gave the vaccine the all-clear and two other states that had opted out resumed the campaign. But Kano did not reinstate the programme.
A delegation from Kano is visiting Indonesia, and the state is buying its own "safe" vaccines from the country, according to the Daily Times of Nigeria. The vaccines will be tested further before being given to children.
Imported disease
"Our search for safe and uncontaminated oral polio vaccine has yielded results because our medical team now in Indonesia has found a reliable source for the vaccines," said Kano State spokesman Sule Ya'u Sule.
"We are not importing from Indonesia because it is a Muslim country, but because the vaccines they are producing contain safe levels of estrogen, which can be harmful to young girls," Sule told Reuters.
Since the mass polio immunisation campaign was suspended in northern Nigeria, polio has spread across the country and into neighbouring countries.
"The countries in west and central Africa have been polio free for a number of years and are now having importations of polio, most recently in Botswana," says Melissa Corkum, spokeswoman for the World Health Organization's polio team. The suspension in Kano has had "serious implications", she says.
Corkum told New Scientist that Nigeria now has the highest number of polio cases in the world. The latest figures, for the year to 12 May, show that of 169 cases worldwide, 119 of these were in Nigeria.
Significant strides
In contrast, other countries where polio is endemic have made significant strides and look set to meet the WHO polio eradication target for the end of 2004.
"We have seen significant progress in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as in North Africa," says Corkum. For example, India had about 1600 cases in 2002, but this has been slashed to just eight cases of polio in 2004 so far.
WHO has seen the lowest number of countries ever - just six - with endemic polio, she adds. But Nigeria and Niger will need "different strategies" to help them catch up with the Asian countries, WHO said in a joint statement with UNICEF, US Centers of Disease Control and Rotary International on Monday.
Paul Fine, an expert in infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says that it is a "good thing" that Kano is finally re-starting its polio immunisation programme.
"This is a complicated and political issue and has been dealt with effectively by WHO," he told New Scientist.
Shaoni Bhattacharya
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