Polio vaccines pass tests
2004-03-18 09:27
Abuja - Independent tests on controversial polio vaccines used in Nigeria show they are safe, President Olusegun Obasanjo said, in a bid to ease Muslim fears the vaccines are contaminated with HIV and other deadly diseases.
Obasanjo said the report by a team of health experts and Muslim leaders sent by the government to conduct independent tests in South Africa, India and Indonesia "categorically attests to the safety of the oral polio vaccine and clears it of contamination by HIV, cancerous agents and anti-fertility agents".
Obasjanjo said it was consistent with the results of similar tests earlier conducted in Nigeria.
US plot
Many Muslims in the north have boycotted polio immunisation campaigns -both recent and in years past - because radical Islamic leaders said they were tainted with cancer-causing agents, the virus that causes Aids and sterilising chemicals, in an alleged US plot to decimate Muslim populations.
Officials in Kano state said scientists discovered trace levels of estadiol - a type of the female hormone oestrogen found in oral contraceptives - in samples of the vaccines used in Nigeria.
Obasanjo said the next polio immunisation round would be conducted from May 23 to 26, with "the highest commitment and dedication possible" to halt the transmission of the polio virus in Nigeria this year. Nigeria is one of the last reservoirs of the disease worldwide.
Obasanjo's efforts were aided by Mohammed Maccido, a leader of the country's Muslims, who appeared beside Obasanjo at the news conference to say he accepted the report.
"I hereby urge all our people to bring out all their children to be immunised," Maccido said.
Kano state, however, said it will not end its rejection of the vaccine.
"With due respect, I believe our professionals (scientists) know better and their findings have not been disputed so far," Kano state spokesman Sule Ya'u Sule told reporters.
He said the state governor Ibrahim Shekarau was going ahead with an earlier announced plan to procure vaccines from Muslim countries in Asia.
World Health Organisation officials stress that even if the hormones were present - which they said was highly improbable - the substances would be absolutely harmless at the almost undetectable levels alleged.
The UN agency estimates that during the last four-day round of immunisations in February, vaccinators achieved 80% immunisation coverage in predominantly Christian southern Nigeria and 75% in multi-religious central regions. It has given no estimates for the Muslim north.
To wipe out polio transmission, the organisation says it needs around 80% coverage overall.
A $3bn, 16-year global campaign to eradicate polio has reduced cases of the disease from 350 000 in 1988 to fewer than a thousand last year. Yet the Nigerian boycott is blamed for cases of polio spreading in recent months from northern Nigeria to eight other African nations where polio had earlier been eliminated.
- AP