[afro-nets] 6 Nations to Intensify Polio Vaccinations

[Dr Rana Jawad Asghar <jawad@alumni.washington.edu>]

6 Nations to Intensify Polio Vaccinations
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By Lawrence K. Altman
January 16, 2004

Health ministers from the six countries where polio is now
spreading said yesterday that they would intensify efforts to
immunize 250 million children against the crippling disease by
the end of this year.

If they succeed, they would move up the World Health Organiza-
tion's goal by one year.

The countries include Nigeria, where immunizations were halted
in recent weeks because some religious and political leaders in
Kano State said the vaccine would make girls infertile.

Nigeria has exported polio cases to at least six countries in
West Africa in recent months, the health agency has said, jeop-
ardizing efforts to have polio join smallpox as the only dis-
eases to be eliminated from the human population.

The other countries with endemic polio are Afghanistan, Egypt,
India, Niger and Pakistan.

Speaking with reporters in a teleconference from a meeting of
the ministers at W.H.O. headquarters in Geneva, the Nigerian
health minister, Eyitayo Lambo, expressed confidence that his
government and officials in Kano would quickly resolve their
differences.

"Nigeria is unequivocably committed politically to the eradica-
tion of polio," Professor Eyitayo said. "We want to bury totally
polio in Nigeria by December 2004."

The organization invited representatives of Kano to Geneva but
bad weather grounded their flight and prevented them from at-
tending, Professor Eyitayo said.

To support their charges, Kano officials conducted tests of the
polio vaccine, saying it was adulterated with hormones and con-
taminants.

But a panel of experts appointed by the Nigerian government sent
the vaccine for testing to two independent laboratories, which
found no adulteration. The vaccine used in Nigeria is the same
one Unicef buys for all countries.

"The oral polio vaccine is very safe," Professor Eyitayo said.

He said he and members of his staff met three times in recent
days with officials from Kano "to show them some of the defects"
in their tests and to resolve other differences.

"We are hopeful that by the end of next week, all these concerns
that they have raised will be addressed," he said. After the is-
sues are resolved, he said, "we want to enlist them in the army
that is going to fight this war" to eradicate polio.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation and home to 300 of the
667 cases of paralytic polio in 2003, according to W.H.O. fig-
ures.

Dr. David L. Heymann, the epidemiologist in charge of the
agency's program to eradicate polio, said that the ministers
were given the option of the end of 2004 or 2005 as their goal
for stopping transmission of the polio virus, and that they
chose 2004.

That goal requires going house-to-house repeatedly to immunize
newborns and infants as rapidly as possible and to avoid missing
any children.

The ministers pledged to immunize 250 million children over the
next six months, a period when the spread of the polio virus is
usually at its yearly low.

Now "may be the last chance to finish the job" of polio eradica-
tion, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, a polio expert, because many do-
nors and countries are tired of investing in the effort.

Health officials described the program, at $4.6 billion, as the
largest such program ever.

The total includes $3 billion from donors, among them Unicef,
the W.H.O., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
the United States and Rotary International. The officials said
they feared that if the program did not meet its goals by 2005,
it would risk losing the entire investment.

Dr. Aylward said that early last year, polio immunizations
"ground to a halt while we scrambled to restructure the program
and find the funding to get the job finished." Now, he said, an
extra $150 million is needed for the push to end polio.

James Lacy, chairman of Rotary International, said, "With so
much at stake, we must not come this close and not finish suc-
cessfully."


--
Dr Rana Jawad Asghar
Program Manager Child Survival, Mozambique
Provincial Coordinator Sofala Province, Mozambique
Health Alliance International, Seattle, WA, USA
http://depts.washington.edu/haiuw/
Coordinator South Asian Public Health Forum
http://www.saphf.org
mailto:jawad@alumni.washington.edu
http://www.DrJawad.com