Nigerians test polio vaccine

2003-11-11 21:15

Nigeria - Nigerian experts will on Wednesday finish testing the safety of a polio vaccine which Islamic scholars claim is part of a plot to sterilise African mothers, health officials said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned last month that the crippling polio virus, once all but eradicated, was making a comeback after the failure of immunisation in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

But an emergency plan to provide oral vaccine to millions of children has so far been thwarted by opposition from radical Muslim clerics, who fear a covert US-led plan to depopulate the continent.

In response to the claims, officials in three northern Nigerian states suspended immunisation and set up committees to re-examine the vaccine, which has been passed as safe by the WHO and international experts.

Sanda Mohammed, health commissioner in Kano State, said laboratory tests would be completed on Wednesday and that the state's 13-strong committee of religious leaders and scientists would then give its verdict.

"We don't deny the existence of polio in our society and we appreciate the need to fight it," he said.

"But all we are saying is that since the people have raised serious allegations on these vaccines we need to investigate and find out whether the allegations are true or not," he said.

"If the allegations are true, we look for alternative medication, and if they are false we continue administering the vaccines. Period."

The spokesperson for the committee said that its conclusion would be published the same day.

The WHO's spokesperson in Nigeria, Austine Oghide, said that the tests had so far confirmed the UN agency's insistence that the vaccine - which has been used around the world with no ill effects - is safe.

"WHO is aware of the concerns in some parts of Nigeria, but what we do know is that the results of the analysis and trials so far carried out on the vaccine have not shown any harmful substance," he said.

- AFP