Polio surge thwarts global eradication plan

Health officials have confirmed a surge in polio infections in northern Nigeria that threatens to undermine global efforts to eradicate the crippling disease. Edugie Abebe, head of Nigeria’s National Programme on Immunisation (NPI) announced on Thursday that 467 new polio cases have been recorded this year, more than double the number of cases recorded in the whole of 2005. “In 2005 we had about 224 wild polio viruses,” said Abebe. “But so far this year we have reported 467 cases and five states in northern Nigeria contribute almost 90 percent of this figure,” she added. Some 15 of Nigeria’s 36 states have reported new outbreaks of polio this year, according to figures released by NPI. A World Health Organisation (WHO) failed to reach its target to eradicate polio by 2005. Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan are the only four countries in the world to have never stamped out polio. Of these, all except Nigeria have reduced the number of polio cases in recent years. Nigeria accounts for nearly 70 percent of the world’s polio cases. Polio spreads through ingestion of contaminated faecal matter and affects mainly children under the age of five. Once contracted polio cannot be cured, though vaccination can provide protection. Global efforts to eliminate the polio virus through immunisation suffered a severe setback in northern Nigeria last year when some northern states in the mainly Muslim north boycotted the vaccination programme. Polio vaccinations were interrupted for up to 10 months after Muslim clerics alleged that the polio vaccine contained impurities that could cause infertility in women and even infect those immunised with the HIV virus and cancer. They presented the vaccination campaign as a Western Christian plot to try and reduce the Muslim population of Nigeria. Polio vaccinations only resumed after the Nigerian government conducted international tests to disprove the claims, and new vaccines were imported from mainly Muslim Indonesia. However, distrust of the vaccines continues to linger among the poor and in many rural areas, enabling a resurgence of the virus. Strains of the virus found in Nigeria have re-emerged in many west, central and southern African countries that had been declared polio-free. After missing last year’s target to eliminate polio, health authorities in Nigeria are stepping up immunisation efforts in the affected states to ensure that polio transmission is stopped by 2007, the NPI official said. “We believe that if we can win in these states then we have won in the whole country,” Edugie said DM/NR/SS