Surmounting baseless rumours, many Nigerian states resume polio immunization - UN

Thirty-five of Nigeria's 37 states are taking part in a massive United Nations polio immunization campaign, a big increase over the second half of last year when only 18 states in Africa's most populous country participated due to unfounded rumours that vaccination against the paralyzing and sometimes fatal disease was unsafe for girls and young women.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) today reiterated that reports questioning the safety and efficacy of the vaccine are invalid.

With outbreaks of poliovirus threatening the goal of eliminating the disease by the end of this year, African countries launched a massive synchronized immunization drive at the beginning of the week to vaccinate 63 million children over the next few days.

In recent months, polio has again spread across west and central Africa, paralyzing children in several previously polio-free countries, with the virus being linked to those circulating in northern Nigeria where immunizations were suspended last August.

Last month WHO called on Nigeria to resume the campaigns at once, and the agency said today that only Kano and Zamfara states had not yet done so.

The current African campaign comes a month after an emergency meeting in Geneva where health ministers of the six remaining polio-endemic countries - Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria and Pakistan - committed themselves to end polio transmission this year with the mass immunization of 250 million children.