Nigerian authorities said on Wednesday polio vaccines recently administered in a nationwide campaign will undergo laboratory testing to calm fears the United States is using the immunisation campaign to sow Aids and sterility among Muslims.
Vice President Abubakar Atiku ordered testing on the vaccines for agents that could spread HIV or sterility, adding that international, federal and state health authorities must work together to resolve ”the various issues surrounding the analysis of the polio vaccines”, Nigeria’s state television reported.
An official in Atiku’s office, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the order.
Health workers on Friday launched a drive to immunize 15-million African children at immediate risk of contracting polio — an effort hampered in Nigeria by an assertion by Islamic radicals the vaccination drive is part of a US plan to decimate the Muslim population by spreading Aids and infertility.
Three predominantly Muslim states in northern Nigeria — Kano, Kaduna and Zamfara — have either delayed or refused permission for the vaccination drive, with Zamfara demanding proof the vaccine is safe.
United Nations officials involved in the campaign say such proof has been repeatedly supplied.
In other predominantly Muslim northern states where the immunisation went ahead, large numbers of people still barred health officials from their homes. In Mafa, a town in northeast Borno State, one family set dogs on immunisation officers that knocked on their front door, Nigerian officials said.
Muslims and Christians in Nigeria’s south have largely embraced the programme.
Polio usually infects children under the age of five through contaminated drinking water and attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, wasting muscles, deformation and sometimes death.
Failure of previous vaccine initiatives in northern Nigeria have aided the disease’s spread internationally, recently leading to the crippling of nearly a dozen children in at least four other West African nations — Ghana, Togo, Niger and Burkina Faso — according to the UN World Health Organisation.
International immunisation campaigns have slashed the number of countries where the polio virus is still breeding to seven — Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Niger and Somalia.
Ninety-nine percent of all new polio cases in the world are in Nigeria, Pakistan and India.
The Nigerian outbreak started in Kano state during the summer.
Experts blame insufficient coverage during mass polio campaigns and routine treatment.
In some areas, only 16% of children were immunised during a campaign last year.
Nigerian Muslims have become increasingly suspicious of vaccine initiatives since 1996, when families in Kano accused New York-based Pfizer of using an experimental meningitis drug on patients without fully informing them of the risks.
The company denied any wrongdoing in a subsequent US federal lawsuit by 20 disabled Nigerians alleging to have taken part in the study. The case was dismissed, but a US appeals court recently revived it. — Sapa-AP