New polio victim confirmed
2004-01-27 18:47
Geneva - The World Health Organisation confirmed on Tuesday the first case of polio since 2000 in the Central African Republic (CAR), taking the number of countries in Africa re-infected by the disease to seven - all imported from Nigeria.
The news underlines the urgency for the last six countries in the world where polio is endemic, including Nigeria where many people fear vaccination, to fulfill a pledge made earlier this month to beat the crippling illness this year under a plan to immunise 250 million children, the WHO said.
The United Nations' health body confirmed a child living about 200km North of Bangui, the capital city of CAR, caught polio on December 16 last year to become the first victim since July 2000.
"The virus detected is linked to viruses circulating in northern Nigeria ... where immunisation campaigns have been suspended since August," the WHO said in a statement.
Families in the Nigerian city of Kano, at the heart of the world's most dangerous polio outbreak, shunned the polio vaccine after Islamic preachers said it was laced with an anti-fertility agent designed to sterilise girls.
The WHO rejects the claim but some Muslim leaders have been whipping up opposition to what they have branded a Western plot to depopulate Africa.
As a result, polio was able to creep back across Nigeria and into previously polio-free Cameroon, Chad, and through Niger, into Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Togo, putting 15 million children at risk, the WHO has said.
"What needs to happen is the northern Nigeria immunisation campaign needs to go ahead as urgently as possible," said WHO spokesperson Oliver Rosenbauer.
Countries that had beaten the disease have stopped immunisation campaigns, leaving their children vulnerable to re-infection from Nigeria, he noted.
"The latest case underlines the vulnerability we have at the moment," Rosenbauer said. "It underlines the need to get the job finished as urgently as possible."
Following a meeting this month of health ministers in Geneva where the WHO is headquartered, Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo vowed to overcome public suspicion and push forward with a polio immunisation drive.
- AFP