JEDDAH, 24 March 2004 — Polio infections have occurred in at least six west and central African states after delays in vaccination in Kano, northern Nigeria, sparking fears that Nigerian Muslims could export the virus to Saudi Arabia.
Kano opted out of a vaccination drive last year when some Islamic leaders said it was part of a Western plot to render Muslim women infertile.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has denied claims by the Muslim leaders that the vaccine was contaminated with an anti-fertility agent, and the government announced that the UN-promoted oral vaccine was safe to use.
The program targets about 60 million children and centers in Nigeria.
The Kano governor’s spokesman, Sule Yau Sule, said that vaccines had already been ordered from Asian suppliers and that the first batch should arrive soon. But he added the boycott would not be lifted until the new batch of vaccines has been tested.
Najatu Muhammad, the first woman senator for Kano Central who recently visited the Kingdom, told Arab News that suspicion about the free distribution of polio vaccine was triggered by the memory of a 1996 incident when US drug company Pfizer used an untested vaccine against bacterial meningitis in Kano. Local people claim that 11 children died as a result.
Pfizer denied the charges.
Bruce Aylward, coordinator of Global Polio Eradication based in Geneva, said the experience with Pfizer is not comparable with that of the oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV).
“The OPV being used in Nigeria has been licensed for more than 40 years, is the same vaccine that has been used in virtually every country in the world, and has a very well-proven safety record,” he told Arab News yesterday.
Half the world’s polio infections originate in Nigeria. Many Nigerians from the Muslim north of the country, which includes Kano, travel to Saudi Arabia for Haj and Umrah every year. Last year, 355 children were paralyzed from polio in Nigeria and half of these cases were in Kano.
This is greater than the total number of cases in India, which has 10 times the population. According to Aylward, although Saudi Arabia is effectively polio-free, it remains at high risk of importations, particularly from any area which has uncontrolled poliovirus transmission — currently limited to some parts of northern Nigeria.
Sule said the Kano government had decided to seek the vaccine from Muslim states in Asia which have developed their own. “We shall test the vaccines which we expect soon and if they are safe, we will announce when the immunization program will begin,” he said.
The Saudi representative of the WHO in Riyadh said if the spread of polio is not controlled, there is “very definitely a high risk of it being exported.”
There is a possible risk of Saudi Arabia importing polio from Nigerian pilgrims, and if controls are not implemented the WHO says there could be a “very serious risk of importing it into Makkah”.
— Additional research by Saad Siddiqui
