Yusuf Umar, Nigeria "I got polio as a small boy. My mother, she didn't know what to do"

Polio robbed Yusuf Umar of the use of both of his legs after he was stricken with the crippling illness as a child in northern Nigeria. As an adult, he is working to encourage mothers to get their children immunised against polio.

Umar lives in the ancient Islamic city of Kano in northern Nigeria where three years ago Muslim religious and political leaders encouraged mothers to shun a global polio eradication campaign, saying that the vaccines were laced with anti-fertility agents.

Nigeria has since recorded 80 percent of the world’s polio cases in 2006 and polio has spread from northern Nigeria to 10 previously polio-free countries in Africa, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Yusuf Umar, like the WHO, wants to see polio eradicated.

“I am a founder member and secretary of the Polio Victims Association of Nigeria. We decided to set up the association because there were associations for people with HIV and AIDS and all these other things and nothing for us to help us deal with government and NGOs.

We are working to end polio in Nigeria and to train some of our members to weld, do carpentry, tailoring or tie and dye for the women so that they don’t have to beg.

Through advocacy we want to show our people as living examples of what polio can do, to show them what can happen if children as not immunised.

Thirty years ago, when I was small and when I got ill with polio, immunisation was not available like it is now.

I got polio as a small boy. My mother, she didn’t know what to do. She took me to a traditional healer as she thought that the problem was jiins, or spirits. But she got no good result.

That was a long time ago, now people should know better. We are still trying our best with them - the problem of neglecting immunisation has eaten deeply into the minds of our people so we have to react strongly to end it.

And our elders, too, they believe it is the spirits and has nothing to do with medicine - so to wipe out this problem is not a small thing.

Being a polio victim there are many things I lost because of this condition. For example, look as my schoolmates. Some of them are in the army, some of them have taken high office - but me I could never do that.

There are many polio victims who have high education, but because of their disabilities they are not in the position they should be.

So I work steadily and stand up for myself so that other polio victims can look at my example.

If you refuse to take immunisation we will talk to you and tell you what might happen to your child. We join the immunisation programme to inform communities and now and again we organise rallies to inform people.

I never believed that the polio vaccination would stop people having children, it was just something they told our people. As to why they would do that - it’s best known to them.”

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