State starts polio immunisation

2004-07-31 15:48

Takai - The governor of the northern Nigerian state of Kano on Saturday finally launched a long-delayed drive to immunise more than four million children against the crippling polio virus.

Governor Ibrahim Shekarau restarted the campaign almost a year after he came under pressure from radical Muslim leaders opposed to vaccination and suspended a UN-backed campaign designed to eradicate polio by the end of 2004

In the intervening months the number of new polio cases has exploded, spreading from Kano across Africa's most populous country. Nigeria now has more than 80% of the world's active cases and the fastest infection rate ever recorded.

"A committee of own brethren, from our own people, have confirmed that the vaccine is safe," he told guests at a large ceremony in the farming village of Takai, 80 kilometres east of Kano city.

As he spoke senior officials in the Kano State government brought their youngest children forward and began receiving droplets of oral polio vaccine from health workers.

"Polio is spreading among children in Kano State ... and I therefore call on the people to ensure that their children are immunised against this crippling disease," Shekarau said.

Emotional ceremony

The ceremony was an emotional one for many in the crowd, especially those who know polio best, men like 30-year-old Ayuba Ibrahim, whose legs withered and became useless after a childhood exposure to the disease.

"My only child, Mohammed, was also infected with polio. He is ten years old. It's now too late for him to have this opportunity, but we will give our support to this campaign," he told AFP as dignitaries gathered.

Despite widespread distrust of the vaccine - triggered by claims from some hardline preachers that the United States is attempting to depopulate Africa by handing out contaminated drugs - many Kano parents back the campaign.

Since last August when Kano began resisting a global UN campaign to prevent polio, the state, an important trading centre in Nigeria's arid mainly Muslim north, has because the epicentre of the world's most dangerous polio outbreak.

UN health agencies and Nigeria's federal government put pressure on Shekarau to drop the ban when polio cases began to pop up in 10 more African countries once thought safe. They are now on hand to support the renewed campaign.

- AFP