Nigeria's Rebuff of Polio Vaccine Easing, WHO Says

Nigeria's Rebuff of Polio Vaccine Easing, WHO Says

David Brown has an article in the Washington Post today on the status of the polio vaccine campaign in Nigeria. There are problems getting to the desired 80% coverage in the middle and the south of the country, but campaigns there have been getting close. In the north, however, "Two states with 4 million vaccination-age children refused to join" this year's campaign.

Brown says that, "over the past years, rumors have spread through Nigeria's Muslim population, especially in the populous state of Kano, that the polio vaccine, given in drops, makes children sterile. Fears that the campaign is part of a global attack on Muslims led some tribal and religious leaders to oppose vaccination.......

"In the past year, eight formerly polio-free countries have been hit by outbreaks traced to the virus originating in northern Nigeria. Ivory Coast, where a child came down with paralytic polio on Dec. 17, is the latest."

What is the difference between complete eradication of a disease and one or two cases a year in a whole country. Well, of course, one difference is for the people who are the "cases" and their families. But when a disease is eradicated from the world, all the countries of the world can save the money and other resources that would have been spent on public health measures against that disease and use them for other purposes. The savings in the case of Smallpox, the only disease that has been eradicated, have been enormous.

It seems clear that the Nigerian problem with polio immunization is a failure of "knowledge for development". A safe, effective vaccine that has been used all over the world is being rejected by a Muslim community on the basis of superstitious beliefs, with serious repercussions worldwide.