Polio vaccination drive targets millions of children in Nigeria
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — An emergency polio vaccination campaign aimed at reaching 25 million children this year has begun in parts of Nigeria newly freed from Boko Haram Islamic extremists, with fears that many more cases of the crippling disease will likely be found.
Two toddlers discovered last month were Nigeria’s first reported polio cases in more than two years, putting the world on alert just months after the African continent was declared free of the disease.
It was a major blow to global efforts to stamp out polio, which persists in only two other countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
A vaccination drive aimed at fighting the disease is going to extraordinary lengths in northeastern Nigeria, which is still threatened by Boko Haram extremists who oppose Western medicine. Health workers using military helicopters, all-terrain vehicles and even tricycle taxis vaccinated 1.5 million children in the past week, starting in the refugee camps where the new cases surfaced.
The World Health Organization has said the two new cases indicate the wild polio virus has been circulating for five years in northeastern Borno state, where Boko Haram began its uprising in 2009.
Just 20 years ago, this West African nation was considered the world’s epicenter of polio, recording 1,000 cases a year. Men and women with twisted limbs crawling along the roadside to beg are still a common sight. A global drive to end polio began in 1988, when the diseasew as endemic in 125 countries.
Over the years, the vaccination campaign has had to fight rumors that the vaccine was a plot to sterilize Muslims, which it overcame by winning over religious and traditional leaders and grass-roots women’s groups.