UN launches massive polio immunization campaign in West Africa

Hundreds of thousands of health workers began an immunization campaign today aimed at reaching every child in five West African countries within three days to stop a growing threat of polio, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said.

In a dispatch from Geneva, WHO said the health workers, volunteers and professionals spread throughout Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo in response to what it said was a new polio outbreak spreading from Nigeria to neighbouring countries, putting 15 million children at risk.

WHO said the $10 million campaign, sponsored by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, was launched after nearly a dozen children in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo were paralyzed from poliovirus genetically traced to northern Nigeria. A further case recently reported in Chad means similar campaigns are planned in that country and Cameroon for mid-November, the agency said.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is headed by WHO, Rotary International, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“The polio-infected states in Nigeria, centring around the state of Kano (near Benin) have re-infected other areas of the country, most worryingly the city of Lagos with its ten million inhabitants,” WHO said.

"Nigeria is now the country with the greatest number of polio cases in the world," said David Heymann, Representative of the WHO Director-General for Polio Eradication. "Polio continues to spread within Nigeria to areas which were polio-free and also to neighbouring countries. Polio and other infectious diseases know no national boundaries. We face a grave public health threat, and our goal of a polio-free world is in jeopardy."

WHO said senior epidemiologists from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative convened a high-level meeting with the Nigerian Minister of Health at the end of September, at which the Minister provided his assurance and commitment to eradicate polio in Nigeria by end-2004.

"Nigeria is the most populous nation in the region, and in many ways it has been a good neighbour, contributing to peacekeeping in West Africa," said Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's Executive Director. "Now it has another crucial role to play in the region, and that is stomping out polio once and for all. We need all Nigerians, particularly community leaders, to step up and do their part to end polio."

Bruce Aylward, WHO’s Global Coordinator for the eradication initiative, said that the situation in Nigeria had become the last major challenge on the road to global polio eradication.

"Because of the tremendous progress made in 2002, the polio eradication tactics and resources were shifted in 2003 to focus on just those few remaining countries which remained endemic. But the situation in Nigeria is now forcing us to go back to countries which had already eliminated polio. We simply cannot afford to see these isolated viruses again paralyzing children in areas which had previously been polio-free. That is why this massive campaign is critical," he said.

Epidemiologists attribute the marked increase in cases in Nigeria, around the state of Kano, to insufficient coverage during both polio immunization campaigns and routine services, WHO said. Monitoring data have highlighted that in at least one state, as few as 16 per cent of children have been sufficiently immunized against polio. A difficult environment has severely compromised the quality of polio campaigns and helped spread rumours about the safety of the oral polio vaccine, the agency said.