The government of the northern Nigerian state of Kano on Wednes-day again rejected the oral polio vaccine promoted by UN health agencies, a spokesman said, despite a decision by the country's federal administration to throw its weight behind a UN inoculation drive.
A spokesman for Kano, the region at the heart of the world's fastest growing outbreak of the crippling polio virus, said that the state's governor and traditional Islamic leader had met with local experts to review evidence gathered about the UN vaccine and concluded once again that it was laced with anti-fertility agents.
"All the results studied proved contamination of the vaccine, therefore all the stakeholders agreed with the government not to allow polio vaccination in Kano until we can procure uncontaminated vaccines for our people," spokesman Sule Ya'u Sule told reporters.
PHOTO: AFP
"The state has decided to opt out of the National Program of Immunization controlled polio vaccination program," he said, referring to a drive, backed by both international agencies and Nigeria's federal government, to inoculate millions of Nigerian children by the end of the year.
Instead, Sule said, Kano was seeking out an independent source of the vaccine in Asia, and would make its own arrangements to restart immunization.
"As we've been saying, we are not against polio vaccination ... but what we re saying is that the drugs given to us are adulterated, and we will not use these drugs just to please somebody," he said.
"We've been in contact with some Asian countries to source drugs that are free from contamination. We have arrived at certain decisions which we will not now discuss for technical reasons, however, and we will do the polio vaccination at our own pace as soon as we have sourced the vaccine," he said.
An expert panel set up by the federal government to test samples of the UN World Health Organization's polio vaccine has pronounced it safe, clearing the way for a resumption of the emergency inoculation drive, officials said.
The panel was briefing President Olusegun Obasanjo on the results of its tests, which were carried out after radical Muslim leaders said Western agents had contaminated the vaccine in a bid to render Muslim girls infertile.
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
RSS