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AFRICA
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New polio cases as Lagos fight disease
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Lagos
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| 08 October 2004 16:04 |
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Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, has reported new polio cases just as the government has intensified efforts to eradicate the deadly disease in the west African country, officials said on Friday.
The Nigerian cases come at a time when the biggest polio-eradication campaign ever launched in Africa was initiated simultaneously in 23 sub-Saharan countries on Friday, with the goal of immunising 80-million children under five over the next four days.
Lagos health commissioner Lekan Pitan told reporters on Thursday that new cases of polio have been discovered in four local government areas since June. He said the development was worrying as Lagos had been declared polio-free since 2000.
Last week President Olusegun Obasanjo kicked off another round of a national immunisation campaign in the northern city of Kano by administering polio droplets to a child. Kano is the epicentre of the world's biggest outbreak of polio. Obasanjo's public participation in the latest inoculation round was aimed at reassuring residents that the vaccine is safe.
Muslim clerics halted the vaccination campaign last year, claiming that the vaccine was tainted with substances that could render girls infertile. The ban was lifted in July, but in the intervening 11 months hundreds of children were paralysed by the disease and it spread to other African countries that were once considered polio-free.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) hope that if Nigeria can bring polio under control, the crippling disease could be eradicated globally by 2005.
Meranwhile, a massive polio eradication campaign began in 23 sub-Saharan countries on Friday.
"We got the support of religious chiefs and we launched an awareness campaign for the people. This is why we believe we can eradicate the polio virus in Africa," said Rima Salah, regional head of Unicef for central and west Africa.
"We are determined and we want to reach every child in each home, even where conflicts are still raging," she added.
Unicef and the WHO are among organisers of the campaign, which fields nearly one million health workers, religious and traditional chiefs, teachers and volunteers. They will crisscross the continent over the next four days to transport more than 100 million doses in refrigerated containers and give each child two drops of vaccine.
Salah said all means available would be used to reach people in war-torn or remote areas: "We will use helicopters in Liberia and Sierra Leone, camels in Mauritania and boats in coastal countries."
Of the 786 polio cases recorded by Wednesday in the world, 597 were in Nigeria and in Niger.
Eleven polio cases have also been detected this year in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur, where there is a high risk of contamination, said Dr David Heymann, a senior WHO official involved in the anti-polio drive.
The Africa drive will coincide will a similar one in Asia to immunize 170 million children in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Organisers said another anti-polio campaign will be launched November 18-22 in all the countries concerned. - Sapa-AFP
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