News roundup

West Africa polio campaign boycotted by Nigerian states

Geneva Fiona Fleck

A mass poliomyelitis vaccination campaign got under way on Monday to immunise 63 million children across west Africa but was boycotted by four predominantly Muslim states in Nigeria, where leaders claim the oral vaccine causes sterility and spreads AIDS.

The west African campaign was intended as a final push to stamp out the disease in the region and is part of the World Health Organization’s 15 year drive to halt transmission of the poliomyelitis virus across the world by 2005.

Since its launch in 1988, the campaign has reduced the number of countries where polio is endemic from 125 to six: Nigeria and Niger in west Africa, plus Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

But without the Nigerian states’ cooperation, WHO officials fear the disease that mainly affects under 5s could make a comeback across the whole continent of Africa, which is now almost polio-free.

Dr David Heymann, . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Dutch doctors suspended for use of complementary medicine

Tony Sheldon
BMJ 2006 332: 929. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Spontaneous preterm delivery in primiparous women at low risk in Denmark: population based study

Jens Langhoff-Roos, Ulrik Kesmodel, Bo Jacobsson, Steen Rasmussen, and Ida Vogel
BMJ 2006 332: 937-939. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

WHO's attempts to eradicate polio are thwarted in Africa and Asia

Owen Dyer
BMJ 2005 330: 1106. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Traditional rulers in northern Nigeria call for halt to polio vaccination

Abiodun Raufu
BMJ 2004 328: 306. [Extract] [Full Text]