Nigeria Targets Millions of Children in New Polio Campaign | Voice of America - English
Some 26,000 Nigerian health workers are going door-to-door in the northern state of Kano administering oral polio drops to children under the age of five. Kano has been the epicenter of the transmission of the crippling polio virus to other parts of the world since 2003 when the authorities suspended polio immunizations for 13 months.
Polio fighters expect to immunize 4.6 million children under the age of five in Kano over the next four days. Nearlyall children paralyzed by polio are in northern Nigeria, where ayear-long boycott of the vaccine in 2003 triggered an explosion of thedisease. The disease was subsequently exported to more than two dozencountries worldwide. Hard-line Nigerian Islamic clerics calledfor the boycott, claiming an immunization campaign was a US-led Westernplot to render Muslims infertile. The government finally reigned in theboycott campaign, but the World Health Organization says up to 30percent of children in the north have never had a single dose ofvaccine. In the bustling Kano metropolis, northern Nigeria'slargest city of some 10 million inhabitants, Aminu Wada leads a groupof polio victims working with vaccination teams to break downresistance to polio vaccinations in conservative neighborhoods. He toldVOA steady progress has been achieved. "Wehad many people with polio in Kano, but many years ago, every year wehad 500, but now, from January to now, only 40 afflicted with polio inKano because of the awareness. My members in the association they aregoing everywhere, mobilizing the people to agree to the immunization," said Wada. Healthofficials say vaccine coverage has doubled countrywide from 35 percentin 2005 to 76 percent last year. But polio cases have nearly doubledthis year in Nigeria as officials struggle to fight an outbreak set offby the polio vaccine itself three years ago. The vaccine-sparkedoutbreak has struck more than 100 children, including eight this year. TheWorld Health Organization has recently listed Nigeria, India, Pakistanand Afghanistan as the only polio-endemic countries in the world.