Isa Mohammed distrusts doctors, especially white foreign ones. His suspicions, he says, stem from a 1996 drug study by American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in which his daughter, now partially disabled, took part. It is that study that is driving a polio-vaccine boycott, now six months old, among northern Nigerian Muslims.
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/ 24 February 2004
A boycott of the vaccine for polio spread to two more northern Nigerian Islamic states on Tuesday, United Nations Children’s Fund officials said, hampering a massive drive to immunise 63-million children in 10 African nations against a polio outbreak.
Desperate for food, tens of thousands of civilians broke through barricades on Monrovia’s front-line bridges on Friday, reuniting Liberia’s war-divided capital after 10 weeks of rebel siege. Many of those pouring across were also searching for their families.
While Nigeria readies a jungle home in exile for warlord-president Charles Taylor, many inside and outside Taylor’s war-battered nation worry he will keep up trouble-making from abroad — and return to fight another day.
They staggered out of jail as scarred stick figures. A few slumped on the pavement in exhaustion — too ill to show any emotion about their newfound freedom. One prisoner was so traumatised he no longer recognised his sister.
President Charles Taylor said he is ready to step down ”in a jiffy” — but only after an international stabilisation force arrives to ensure an orderly transition in this war-divided country.
An upcoming African-American summit aims to bring black Americans and Africans together in building an oil industry that will one day replace the Mideast’s, former US Ambassador Andrew Young said on Wednesday.