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Polio outbreak halted in Africa
11/11/2005 09:24 - (SA)
Geneva - The United Nations health agency said on Friday that a polio outbreak in ten countries of West and Central Africa had been successfully stopped.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said no new cases of the crippling disease had been reported in the ten nations since early June.
Nearby Nigeria, the source of the outbreak, is still affected.
The two-year epidemic, which paralysed almost 200 children, was halted by a massive vaccination campaign, marking a major step in international efforts to wipe out the disease.
The affected countries were: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali and Togo.
Polio vaccine declared safe
Prior to the outbreaks from mid 2003, those countries had been declared polio-free.
Polio spilled across the region after authorities in northern Nigeria's Kano state banned polio vaccination for 13 months between 2003 and 2004.
Local radical Muslim clerics had claimed that the vaccine was laced with chemicals designed to render girls infertile as part of a United States-led plot to depopulate Africa.
The ban undermined the United Nations' global campaign to stamp out polio by the end of this year and Kano became the epicentre of a renewed spread of the polio virus to other parts of the world.
The state lifted the ban and resumed immunisation in September 2004 after a committee of doctors had certified the vaccine safe.
Polio eradication efforts are intensifying in Nigeria, the WHO noted.
They come as part of a campaign in 27 other African countries, beginning on Friday, aiming to ensure the disease does not reappear in areas where it has been stopped, the WHO noted.
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