Massive campaign to protect 15 million children from polio

A three-day vaccination campaign was launched in five West African countries on Wednesday to protect 15 million children from a new polio outbreak spreading from Nigeria, the World Health Organization (WHO) said . The US $10 million campaign aims to vaccinate every child in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo, against the virus, which has been genetically traced to Kano state in northern Nigeria. The vaccination drive by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative after nearly a dozen children were paralysed by the polio outbreak in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo. WHO said one case had also been reported in Chad and mass vaccinations would be conducted there and in Cameroon in mid-November. "Nigeria is now the country with the greatest number of polio cases in the world," said David Heymann, the Representative of the Director-General of WHO for Polio Eradication. "Polio continues to spread within Nigeria to areas which were polio-free and also to neighbouring countries. Polio and other infectious diseases know no national boundaries. We face a grave public health threat and our goal of a polio-free world is in jeopardy," he added. WHO said the outbreak had also spread within Nigeria, most worryingly to the commercial capital Lagos, a city of 10 million inhabitants, which had been free of polio for two years. Epidemiologists blamed the resurgence of polio in Nigeria on insufficient immunization coverage in the north, where some Muslim organisations have opposed vaccination campaigns. WHO said monitoring data showed that in one un-named state of Nigeria only 16 percent of children had been sufficiently. In July, the Supreme Council for Shari'ah in Nigeria (SCSN) and the Kaduna State Council of Imams and Ulama urged Muslims to resist the government's polio immunization programme, alleging that vaccines being used were intended to sterilise children and control population growth. To overcome this belief, public health organisations, working with top Muslim doctors in the region, conducted widely publicised evaluations of the vaccines to prove to the public that there was nothing sinister about them. Negative reaction to polio immunization has also been noted in neighbouring Niger, especially in Maradi and Zinder near the Nigerian border. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has been using radio broadcasts and has working with traditional chiefs to disseminate information in Niger on the importance of vaccinations. Despite this latest setback, epidemiologists are convinced that polio can be eradicated from Nigeria by the end of next year. Last month, following a meeting with senior epidemiologists from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the Nigerian health minister gave a commitment to eradicate the disease in the country by end of 2004. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is spearheaded by WHO, Rotary International, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF. Polio is now present in only seven countries down from over 125 when the initiative was launched in 1988.