Nigeria says it can’t set polio campaign timetable

LAGOS – Nigeria’s mainly Muslim state of Kano, which has seen an explosion of the crippling polio virus since banning vaccines last year, said yesterday it could not set a timetable for resuming immunisation.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday Kano had pledged to restart the campaign in early July, after a 10-month ban during which the virus spread across Nigeria and into 10 other African countries that were previously polio-free. Kano suspended the immunisation campaign last September when prominent Muslim leaders said they suspected that vaccines supplied by Western donours were adulterated to reduce fertility and spread HIV as part of a US-led drive against Islam.The state government agreed in May to resume the campaign with new vaccines from Indonesia, but spokesman Sule Yau Sule said samples of the new vaccine were still undergoing testing.”We cannot give a specific date when the immunisation exercise will resume because the tests have not been concluded.It was supposed take one week but it has now dragged into weeks,” Yule said by telephone from Kano.”We will begin as soon as the result is out.We have already retrained staff and are mobilising people, including Islamic leaders to participate.”The re-emergence of the virus in countries that had been polio-free has been a major setback to a WHO campaign to eradicate the disease – endemic in only six countries in 2003 – by the end of 2005.There have been 62 new infections in Nigeria in the last two weeks, with a total of 259 confirmed polio cases in Africa’s most populous nation.- Nampa-ReutersKano suspended the immunisation campaign last September when prominent Muslim leaders said they suspected that vaccines supplied by Western donours were adulterated to reduce fertility and spread HIV as part of a US-led drive against Islam.The state government agreed in May to resume the campaign with new vaccines from Indonesia, but spokesman Sule Yau Sule said samples of the new vaccine were still undergoing testing.”We cannot give a specific date when the immunisation exercise will resume because the tests have not been concluded.It was supposed take one week but it has now dragged into weeks,” Yule said by telephone from Kano.”We will begin as soon as the result is out.We have already retrained staff and are mobilising people, including Islamic leaders to participate.”The re-emergence of the virus in countries that had been polio-free has been a major setback to a WHO campaign to eradicate the disease – endemic in only six countries in 2003 – by the end of 2005.There have been 62 new infections in Nigeria in the last two weeks, with a total of 259 confirmed polio cases in Africa’s most populous nation.- Nampa-Reuters