Polio reported in Lagos

2004-10-08 19:55

Lagos - Nigeria's largest city Lagos has reported new polio cases just as the government intensified efforts to eradicate the deadly disease in the west African country, officials said on Friday.

Lagos health commissioner Lekan Pitan told reporters on Thursday new cases of polio have been discovered in four local government areas since June.

"The sudden onset of paralysis was recorded last month, but confirmation of the case which involves series of laboratory investigations came out last month," he said.

He said the development was worrying since Lagos had since 2000 been declared polio-free. He blamed the new cases to an influx of people from other parts of Nigeria into the city, Nigeria's economic powerhouse, accounting for some 15 million of the country's 130 million people.

Last week, President Olusegun Obasanjo kicked off another round of a national immunisation campaign in the northern city of Kano by administering polio droplets to a child.

Kano is the epicentre of the world's biggest outbreak of polio. Obasanjo's public participation in the latest inoculation round was aimed at reassuring residents of the city that the vaccine is safe.

Muslim clerics halted the vaccination campaign last year, claiming that the vaccine was tainted with substances that could render girls infertile.

The ban was lifted in July, but in the intervening 11 months hundreds of children were paralysed by the disease and it spread to other African countries that were once considered polio-free.

The World Health Organisation and UN Children's Fund (Unicef) hope that, if Nigeria can bring polio under control, the crippling disease could be eradicated globally by 2005.

- AFP