Arab Times

Polio attacks revive ‘conspiracy’ worries

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KANO, Nigeria, Feb 26, (AFP): Walking with wooden crutches because polio robbed him of the use of his legs, Aminu Ahmed Tudun-Wada is determined to prevent superstiti­on and misinforma­tion crippling efforts to vaccinate against the disease.

“If the West wanted to kill you, it doesn’t have to be through polio (immunisati­on),” said the 53-year-old head of a polio victims’ associatio­n in the Nigerian state of Kano.

“Most of the medicine you take is imported,” but somehow not subject to the same fears of clandestin­e sterilisat­ion, he said.

Nigeria, one of only three countries where polio is still endemic, has long grappled with conspiracy theories surroundin­g vaccines against the crippling disease, but deadly attacks this month have given the issue a new and frightenin­g focus.

On Feb 8, gunmen opened fire at two clinics where vaccinatio­n workers had gathered, killing at least 10 people in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city and the biggest in the country’s mainly Muslim north.

The shootings came two days after a popular radio programme revived a dangerous theory that many wished had long disappeare­d in Nigeria — hinting that vaccines were part of a Western plot against Muslims.

In the days before the attacks, a controvers­ial Muslim cleric in the city of Zaria, Awwal Adam Albani, made fiery comments suggesting the West was concealing informatio­n about vaccinatio­ns.

There has been no proof that the killings were linked to either the radio programme or the cleric’s speech, with the culprits still at large.

However, such conspiracy talk deeply concerns Nigerian government officials working to stamp out polio and philanthro­pists such as Bill Gates, whose foundation has pushed hard to eradicate the disease.

Similar suspicions about the vaccine in Pakistan have led to the killing of at least 19 people since December. Besides Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanista­n are the other two countries where the disease remains endemic.

Poliomyeli­tis is transmitte­d by a virus that enters the body through the mouth, usually in faecally-contaminat­ed water or food.

It affects mainly children under the age of five, with one in 200 infections leading to irreversib­le paralysis, usually in the legs, often within hours of infection.

Of those paralysed, five to 10 percent die when their breathing muscles become immobilise­d.

Tudun-Wada is part of a campaign to educate Nigerians about the benefits of vaccinatio­n, which has caused infections to drop from 350,000 world-wide in 1988 to only 650 in 2011.

In an interview with a US television programme in January, Gates spoke about conspiracy theories underminin­g the campaign in Nigeria.

“Once a rumour like that gets out, it’s very hard to stop the damage,” the Microsoft cofounder said.

“In fact, to this day, which is almost a decade later, in parts of northern Nigeria there is 20 percent of the households that the parents won’t give the vaccine unless we bring in the religious leader and he really reassures them that ‘no, this is safe.’”

Claims that polio vaccines are a Western tool used to sterilise Muslims grew prominent in Nigeria’s north about a decade ago and spread so widely that the state of Kano had to pause immunisati­ons in 2003.

Kano is one of several areas in north Nigeria hit repeatedly by Islamist extremists Boko Haram and gunmen tied to the group may be responsibl­e for the clinic attacks.

But some say the violence may have been an eruption of a bitter political rivalry between two parties battling for control of the state. Polio vaccines have in the past played a role in populist political rhetoric in Kano.

Two journalist­s and a cleric have been charged with “inciting disturbanc­e” over the radio programme that preceded the murders.

The Feb 6 episode of Wazobia FM’s Sandar Girma programme featured a story about cleric Abubakar Rabo who claimed Kano state officials forced his children to be immunised.

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