WHO Begins African Polio Vaccine Push

Bearing droppers of polio vaccine and promises of its safety, hundreds of thousands of volunteers fanned out across 10 African nations Monday in a drive to stop a polio outbreak from spreading from Nigerian states that have banned the vaccine.

Islamic leaders in three northern Nigerian states have blocked polio inoculations since October, calling them part of a U.S. plot to spread AIDS or infertility among Muslims.

One of the states, Kaduna, lifted the ban on the eve of Monday’s campaign -- but even there, many Islamic neighborhoods turned away the volunteers with their iceboxes of orally administered vaccines.

“People will resist it,” declared Nafiu Baba Ahmed, secretary-general of Nigeria’s Supreme Council for Sharia, or Islamic law. “We are concerned about the safety of our children.”

Muslims in Nigeria’s arid north have become wary of vaccine initiatives since 1996, when families in Kano state accused New York-based Pfizer Inc. of using an experimental meningitis drug on patients without fully informing them of the risks.

The company denied any wrongdoing. A U.S. court dismissed a lawsuit by 20 disabled Nigerians alleged to have taken part in the study, but a U.S. appeals court later revived it.

The World Health Organization, the agency that organized the vaccine campaign, says the ban on the vaccine has spread the crippling disease into seven African nations where it had been eliminated and endangers a 16-year effort to eradicate polio globally.

Until the Nigeria-based outbreak, endemic polio had been narrowed to six nations, including three -- Nigeria, Niger and Egypt -- in Africa. Global cases had been reduced from 350,000 in 1988 to fewer than 1,000 last year.

The outbreak helped trigger the emergency campaign in Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Ivory Coast and Chad.

In Ivory Coast, women in the rebel-held Muslim and Christian city of Bouake lined up by the dozens under a scorching sun to get the vaccine for babies strapped to their backs.

In Nigeria, health workers made no attempts to launch the campaign in the two states -- Kano and Zamfara -- that banned immunizations. In Kaduna state, response was mixed.

In Christian neighborhoods, some parents rushed out of houses dragging toddlers to receive the vaccine. Mothers pried open the jaws of wailing children. Volunteers squeezed the vaccine, drop by drop, onto tongues.

“We are Christians. We like it,” said 40-year-old Ruth Yusuf, holding out her 3-month-old son, Jerry, for the vaccine. “It is only Muslims that don’t like it.”

Residents of a predominantly Muslim neighborhood, Rafin Guza, turned away the volunteers as U.N. officials watched.

Residents “told me I was spreading AIDS,” said volunteer Ridwan Yusuf, a 20-year-old student who was blocked from immunizing dozens of children.