Fresh outbreak of polio emerges in northern Nigeria ? UN health agency

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=27095&Cr=polio&Cr1=

Fresh outbreak of polio emerges in northern Nigeria ? UN health agency

20 June 2008 ? An outbreak of polio has hit northern Nigeria again and started spreading into neighbouring countries, the United Nations health agency says, warning of a potential international outbreak on the scale of the one that struck 20 countries between 2003 and 2006.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Wednesday that there has been a nine-fold increase in the number of new cases caused by wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) so far this year in Nigeria compared with the same period last year. The West African country now accounts for 86 per cent of all the world?s cases with that strain of polio.

Cases of WPV1 linked to the northern Nigeria outbreak have recently been identified in Benin and western Niger as well, a similar pattern to the 2003-06 outbreak that resulted in 1,475 cases in 20 countries, including some as far away as Indonesia and Yemen.

WHO said the new outbreak has occurred because as many as one in five children have not been immunized against polio in key high-risk areas in northern Nigeria. Authorities are planning two large-scale vaccination campaigns next month and in August, and similar campaigns are taking place in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

The UN agency said disease surveillance is also being stepped up across the region to try to prevent the outbreak from widening.

Fears are high because of the intensity of the outbreak, the upcoming rainy season ? a period associated with increased transmission of the disease ? and the anticipated large-scale population movements for the Islamic Hajj to Mecca later this year.

 

[Shiloh]

Re: Fresh outbreak of polio emerges in northern Nigeria ? UN health agency

Source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gdvyDClf9nmdv0juNBAJ8hBV5bew

Polio on the rise in north Nigerian state

KANO, Nigeria (AFP) ? Officials in northern Nigeria's most populuous state have said they are worried by a sharp rise in the number of cases of the paralysing disease poliomyelitis.

"In the last six months we have recorded 90 polio cases which is a radical shift from the same period in 2007 when we had zero cases," Kano health commissioner Aisha Isyaku Kiru told a gathering of health officials and donor agencies late Friday.

She linked the increase to a decline in polio immunisation as parents have become increasingly reluctant to take their children for routine immunisation.

"Events in the past few months in the journey towards polio eradication have been disheartening," Kano state governor Ibrahim Shekarau told the same gathering.

Kano has been the epicentre of the transmission of the crippling polio virus to other parts of the world since 2003 when the authorities suspended polio immunization for 13 months.

The suspension followed claims by radical muslim clerics and some medical doctors that the vaccine was laced with substances that could render girls infertile as part of a US-led western plot to depopulate Africa.

Although the state resumed its polio vaccination campaign after clinical trials in and outside Nigeria proved the vaccine safe, Kano had already infected other countries in the region that had been considered polio-free.

Even after the vaccination campaign resumed, health officials noted a falling off in interest on the part of parents.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently listed Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as the only polio-endemic countries in the world.

Seven states in the north: Kano, Katsina, Yobe, Jigawa, Zamfara, Sokoto and Kebbi, have been declared as polio-endemic states by Nigerian health authorities.

The pronouncement by the WHO "was embarrassing enough to provoke immediate response to the challenge by any serious nation", Nigeria's acting health minister Hassan Lawan told the gathering.

"We shall this time meet the March 2009 target for the interruption of the transmission of wild polio virus in Nigeria," Lawan said.

"Once you capture Kano, you capture the north and the fight against polio in Nigeria is won," Lawan said.