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Vaccine-linked polio hits Nigeria
By: Alex Last, BBC News, Lagos,
Nigeria (Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 10:59 GMT
11:59 UK)
[original British spelling changed to American spelling]
Nigeria is fighting a rare outbreak of a vaccine-derived form of polio,
says the UN's World Health Organization.
It says 69 children in the north have
caught the paralyzing disease from others who had already been immunized. The
WHO says such rare outbreaks have occurred where immunization campaigns did not
reach enough of the population. In 2003 Islamic leaders brought a temporary halt
to the vaccine campaign in the north saying it was a Western conspiracy to
sterilize Muslim women. The WHO says this rare outbreak of vaccine-derived polio
demonstrates the need for more vaccination, not less. But the concern is that
the cause of the outbreak could be misinterpreted by people here and
reinforce their skepticism of the whole vaccine
campaign.
Scare stories
Children in Nigeria lined up for the oral
polio vaccine.
Vaccinations were halted in 2003 when unfounded
scare stories frightened parents & civil authorities.
The World Health Organization says the
outbreak occurred when some of those who had received the oral polio vaccine
excreted a mutated form of the virus which infected those who were not
immunized. It says the outbreak is ongoing but slowing because of the continuing
vaccination campaign, and the last reported case was in August. The WHO says the
outbreak occurred because not enough people were receiving the polio vaccine in
the first place. Northern Nigeria still has a low coverage rate for the
vaccination campaign, a legacy of a temporary halt to the program in 2003. Those
scare stories built on existing traditional skepticism of Western medicine.
But more recently the vaccination
program has made some progress. Polio cases as a whole are down on last year, in
part because of a new program of polio victims accompanying immunization teams
to demonstrate to parents the risks of not having their children vaccinated.
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