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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS