Polio strikes Somalia again
2005-09-13 14:53
Geneva - Polio has reappeared in Somalia, three years after the disease was declared eradicated from the Horn of Africa nation, said the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday.
The head of the WHO's campaign against polio, Dr Bruce Aylward, said a 15-year-old girl in Mogadishu was confirmed on Monday to have died of the disease.
He said: "With Somalia, 19 countries have been re-infected in the last 24 months."
An African resurgence of polio - initially blamed a delay in vaccinations in northern Nigeria for religious and ideological reasons - had been an immense setback to a United Nations programme to eliminate the disease worldwide by the end of 2005.
Somalia, a nation of about 10 million people, had been carved up among rival warlords and torn apart by factional warfare since the overthrow in 1991 of strongman Mohammed Siad Barre.