Kaduna, Nigeria — Health workers kicked off a massive polio immunization campaign for 63 million children in west and central Africa on Monday, trying to stop an outbreak spreading from Islamic northern Nigeria states that have banned the polio vaccine.
Volunteers among hundreds of thousands of workers mobilized for the 10-country campaign went door-to-door. In Christian neighbourhoods of the predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria city of Kaduna, parents at times rushed out of houses dragging toddlers to receive the vaccine.
Mothers pried open the jaws of wailing children, while volunteers squeezed out the oral vaccine from droppers.
”We are Christians. We like it,” said 40-year-old Ruth Yusuf, holding her three-month-old son Jerry for immunizing. ”It is only Muslims that don't like it.”
Three Muslim states in northern Nigeria had banned the polio vaccine.
Islamic leaders there have declared the immunization campaign a U.S. plot to render Muslims sterile or kill them with AIDS, and say their own tests have shown the vaccine to be contaminated.
Leaders of one of the three states, Kaduna, lifted the ban for Monday's launch of the emergency vaccination campaign.
The ban stands in the other two states, Kano and Zamfara. Health workers say they will not attempt immunizations there without the co-operation of authorities.
The World Health Organization blames the vaccine ban in large part for an outbreak that has spread polio from northern Nigera back into seven Africa countries where the disease had been thought to be eradicated.
A 16-year WHO-led campaign since 1988 has reduced the number of polio cases worldwide from 350,000 annually to less than 1,000 in 2003, with at least one-third of those in Nigeria. The outbreak threatens efforts to stamp out polio worldwide by 2005, WHO says.
The campaign targets Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast and Chad.
