Polio vaccinations resume in Nigeria

TAKAI, Nigeria – The governor of a heavily Muslim state in Nigeria poured drops of polio vaccine into babies’ mouths Saturday, signaling the state’s resumption of vaccinations after an 11-month ban threatened a global campaign to eradicate the disease.

U.N. officials expressed relief as health workers carried out a door-to-door vaccination campaign in the northern state of Kano, epicenter of a growing African outbreak of the potentially crippling disease.

Kano Gov. Ibrahim Shekarau had suspended polio vaccinations in August 2003, explaining he wanted state scientists to investigate allegations by some Muslim groups the immunizations contained contaminants feared to cause AIDS or infertility.

On Saturday he assured parents at a ceremony in the village of Takai the vaccines were harmless.

Health workers were moving Saturday across Kano and seven other states to vaccinate as many children as possible before September, when epidemiologists fear a major epidemic throughout Africa at the start of the polio “high season.”

“It’s the beginning of the very final push to eradicate polio from Nigeria and the world. Polio will have no hiding place anymore, from today,” said Gerrit Beger, spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund.

A dozen other African nations will be immunizing later in the year.

Polio is a waterborne disease that usually infects young children, attacking the nervous system and causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and sometimes death.

The disease already has appeared in 10 other sub-Saharan African countries, after being limited to only two at the beginning of last year.

Nigeria has had more than 430 polio cases this year – 80 percent of the global total and four times the number recorded in the same period in 2003. One-quarter of Nigeria’s cases are in Kano.