Muslim leader cautiously welcomes checks on polio vaccine

A Muslim leader who is leading the campaign against polio immunisation in Nigeria on Thursday gave a cautious welcome to government’s decision to conduct fresh laboratory investigation of the vaccines used in the exercise. Datti Ahmed, head of the Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria (SCSN), has spearheaded the campaign, saying that the polio vaccine contained agents that could cause infertility and spread the human immuno-deficinecy virus which causes AIDS. A medical doctor by profession, Ahmed said, he was aware of the benefits of immunisation and was in support of the use of other vaccines such as that for meningitis, which is also endemic in parts of northern Nigeria. SCSN said the polio immunisation effort in Nigeria was part of a Western conspiracy to curb population growth in Africa, especially in the predominantly Muslim regions. In the course of a four-day polio immunisation exercise which ended on Monday, many families influenced by SCSN's campaign turned away health officials who sought to immunise children from their homes. Three states in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north either suspended the exercise or postponed it until a future date over similar fears about the safety of the vaccines. On Wednesday, Nigeria’s Vice President Abubakar Atiku announced a government decision to subject the vaccines to a new laboratory analysis to allay the widespread fears. "We are happy the government has seen the need to have the vaccines investigated," Ahmed told IRIN. "But it shouldn’t be the people who are importing the vaccines into Nigeria, like UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), who should do the testing," he added. He said his group would prefer a team of "competent, scientifically educated Nigerians and foreigners", working with representatives of agencies involved in polio immunisation, to undertake the laboratory review of the polio vaccines. Ahmed denied he was raising a false alarm, saying he was acting on information obtained from international scientific journals and the internet that the polio vaccines could cause AIDS and sterility. The SCSN, he added, would like its fears allayed by a thorough investigation of the vaccines before it could embrace polio immunisation wholeheartedly. "We support immunisations, but so far the vaccine we have allegations against, is the one for polio," he said. The decision to conduct laboratory investigation of the vaccines was announced after the United Nations resident coordinator in Nigeria Teggenework Gettu and UNICEF country representative Ezio Murzi met Atiku on Monday, urging government intervention to end the "impasse around vaccine safety". UNICEF said the campaign against the oral polio vaccine in northern Nigeria had resulted in many children missing immunisation, leading to a resurgence of the virus spreading to other parts of the country and West Africa, and paralysing more children.