The Nigerian city at the epicenter of the world's most dangerous outbreak of polio will boycott the UN' vast new drive to eradicate the crippling disease once and for all, officials said on Sunday.
The UN children's agency immediately warned that opposition from Muslim leaders to polio vaccination would lead to many more children being left disabled and undo the successes of a 16-year-old global immunization drive.
PHOTO: AP
"Any delay in immunization activities will result in the wider spread of the virus, crippling more innocent children in Nigeria and in neighboring countries," UNICEF spokesman Gerrit Beger said.
UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a campaign to immunise 60 million children in west and central Africa as part of a global drive to stamp out the polio virus before the end of the year.
Immunization teams will distribute oral vaccine in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Niger, Togo and in those areas of Nigeria ready to accept the program.
But the government of the northern Nigerian city of Kano -- where Muslim leaders have alleged that the oral vaccine is laced with chemicals designed to render African girls infertile -- told reporters it would not take part.
Kano's decision is critical to the success of the vaccination drive, as the teeming trading center has been traced as the source for a polio outbreak which has spread to at least seven formerly safe countries, health officials said.
"Kano State Government has resolved to continue with the suspension of the polio vaccination exercise until the issue [of the vaccine's safety] is resolved," said state spokesman Sule Ya'u Sule.
Polio immunization was suspen-ded in Kano and some other areas of mainly-Muslim northern Nigeria last year, after radical clerics began preaching that the drive was part of a US-led plot to depopulate Africa.
The WHO and UNICEF have dismissed the claims.
"UNICEF has been immunizing children around the globe for decades and our biggest wish is to continue to do the job of eradicating polio once and for all in Nigeria and worldwide," Beger said.
Beger warned that Kano's suspicion could "reverse the tremendous gains that have been made by UNICEF and its partners in reducing global cases of polio from 350,000 in 1988 to less than 1,000 in 2003."
Despite the international consensus that the vaccine is safe, last month opponents of the scheme got an unexpected boost when Kano's government reported finding traces of fertility hormones in a test sample of the oral vaccine.
Nigeria's federal government conducted its own tests, which found the vaccine safe, and international experts criticized Kano's findings, pointing out that the small amounts of estrogen found did not constitute a risk.
"You can find small amounts of these things even in tap water," one said.
Nigeria's federal government has now sent two expert committees to test samples of the vaccine in laboratories abroad -- in India and South Africa -- in a bid to convince doubters in the north that the vaccine is safe. But Kano State officials said they were annoyed at being excluded from one of the two missions and insisted that their own tests were valid.
"What we are saying is that since the vaccines in use have been found to be contaminated we need these donor agencies to bring new consignments, which we will test," Sule said.
"If we find them to be safe, we will gladly continue the exercise," he promised.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS