WHO: Polio Cases Rose by One-Third in 2004

[Rose Siding]

GENEVA -- The number of polio cases last year rose by almost one-third, despite a renewed immunization campaign in Nigeria after the end of a vaccine boycott, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The 2004 worldwide case count reached 1,185, compared with 784 in 2003, the United Nations health agency said.

Most of the cases were in Africa -- largely in Nigeria, the continent's most populous nation.
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Hardline Islamic clerics in Nigeria's northern Kano state led the immunization boycott, claiming the polio vaccine was part of a U.S.-led plot to render Nigeria's Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS.
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Amid the vaccine boycott, the Nigerian-rooted virus spread to neighbor countries including Benin, Chad, and Cameroon. It also was exported further afield, to Botswana, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Togo and even Saudi Arabia.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-polio,0,172800.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[GAspnes]

1. it's a sad story of politics and fear

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0001EFE3-08BE-11BF-AD0683414B7F0000&sc=I100322

Polio's perfect storm started in the summer of 2003 in northern Nigeria. In the Kano state, politicians and clerics claimed that the polio vaccine was a "Western" ploy, tainted with HIV or with hormones meant to render Muslim women infertile. The resulting resistance to the eradication program led to immunizations being suspended for 11 months. By the summer of 2004, outbreaks in Nigeria had spread to 10 surrounding nations that had been polio-free for years, leaving nearly 700 children paralyzed and reestablishing polio in four countries.

A massive mop-up campaign began in October, involving one million volunteers in 23 African countries attempting to vaccinate 80 million children by year's end. The unexpected setback cost the cash-strapped eradication program an additional $100 million. The goal for ending wild-virus transmission worldwide has now slipped to the end of 2005.