A religious row in Nigeria is giving a foothold in West Africa to polio, the virus that twists and paralyses young limbs and was eradicated in the rest of the world 13 years ago.
A 20-month-old baby girl who was infected in Côte d’Ivoire last month is confirmed to have contracted the type 1 strain that has spread from northern Nigeria through seven other countries.
At least 45 people in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana and Togo have been linked to the strain imported from Nigeria.
Nearly four million children in Nigeria are under threat as some of the Muslim states in the most populous African country refuse to allow vaccination.
Poliomyelitis invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. One in 200 cases leads to irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs.
Last week the campaign to inoculate 63-million people against the fastest-spreading polio outbreak in the world ended with four northern Nigerian states still boycotting it.
Despite assurances from the World Health Organisation, the Nigerian government and the drug companies, the states believe the vaccine is laced with dangerous chemicals that will make women barren.
Kano state, the most obstinate of these, is the epicentre of the polio epidemic. It banned the vaccine outright.
In other states like Kaduna, where people were given a choice, health workers administering the vaccine were chased off by stick-wielding men.
Exasperated, Carol Bellamy, the executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund has declared: ”It is unforgiveable to allow still more children to be paralysed because of further delay and baseless rumours.
”Children living in Kano state have been denied the polio vaccine since August last year. This creates an open channel for polio to spread back into the rest of Nigeria and across West and Central Africa.
”Children in Kano and other northern states of Nigeria have been waiting over six months for the state authorities to conclude several tests of polio vaccine and restart the immunisation activities.
”We call on these authorities to immediately re-join the polio eradication effort, which promises to be one of Africa’s greatest success stories in public health.
”Nigerian leaders must take this opportunity now or answer to their children.”
Health workers are hoping the states will be swayed to join a renewed eradication programme this month.
Nigeria’s Muslim community is by no means united against vaccination. A representative of the Sultan of Sokoto, the country’s most senior Muslim leader, issued a statement last week swearing ”by almighty Allah, based on our investigations, that we did not find any substance harmful to human health in the vaccine”.
Nigeria’s 12 mainly Muslim states are deeply divided over the issue. The anti-vaccination campaign is seen as a cynical bid to hit at the secular government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is driving force behind the bid to eradicate polio in his country.
The hard-line Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria has attacked moderate Muslim leaders who backed the vaccination programme.
The council said the Jam’atu Nasril Islam group was irresponsible for joining the government’s efforts to oversee tests on the vaccine.
The anti-immunisation campaign is also part of a bid to present the West as a lethal force. It leans heavily on the illiteracy of the people in the northern states.
The immunisation campaign hit another snag in the Central African Republic when a delay in funding forced the postponement in some provinces. By this week, however, the republic had joined nine other countries in the intensive campaign to drive out the disease.