WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2004-05-18 Time: 14:10:06 Posted By: Jan
[Healthcare in Africa has got worse since the end of colonialism. Jan]
LAGOS, Nigeria May 17, 2004 (151) African leaders approved an emergency strategy Monday to immunize 74 million children for polio in 21 nations, U.N. officials said.
The approval came amid signs that a heavily Muslim state in Nigeria is ready to abandon it boycott of the vaccine, which allowed the disease to mushroom.
Kano, in northern Nigeria, has been the global epicenter of a polio resurgence since it refused last October to allow children to be innoculated because of persistent rumors the vaccines are part of a U.S.-led plot to spread AIDS or infertility among Muslims.
Kano has finalized a deal to import polio vaccines from a company in Indonesia, Kano government spokesman Sule Ya’u Sule said. State officials hope to permit children to be immunized in coming weeks once Kano government scientists approve the vaccines’ safety, he added.
“When we are sure (the new vaccine) is safe, we will immediately conduct polio immunizations,” Sule said. “People will be debriefed to build confidence that it is safe to use.”
U.N. officials say the boycott has endangered global efforts to eradicate the potentially-crippling disease.
Polio, after smallpox, would be only the second disease known to be wiped out by man.
The United Nations and Nigerian federal authorities have vigorously rejected claims polio vaccines are unsafe, pointing to tests conducted by scientists in Nigeria and abroad.
Kano officials say their own scientists found trace levels of a hormone the officials fear could cause infertility in young girls. Some Islamic clerics seized on the controversy as evidence the immunization program is part of a U.S.-led plot to cause cancer, AIDS and infertility.
Nigeria’s health minister, speaking in Geneva on Monday, said the federal government recently agreed with Kano on terms to restart immunizations, using vaccines that, according to Sule, Kano officials would “for safety reasons, choose and buy ourselves.”
As the epidemic continues to spread out from Nigeria, African health ministers meeting in Geneva agreed on a plan Monday to immunize 74 million children in 21 countries.
The new campaign stretches from Senegal on Africa’s western tip to Chad at the continent’s center, said Bruce Aylward, Geneva-based coordinator of the U.N. World Health Organization’s polio eradication initiative.
A coordinated anti-polio campaign could still eliminate the disease while failure could result in a “full-blown epidemic” by next year, Aylward told The Associated Press in a phone interview,
Nigeria currently has 119 confirmed polio cases, highest in the world and five times the 24 recorded one year ago, Aylward said. In that period, polio has spread from 10 to 23 Nigerian states and nine other African nations where it had previously been eradicated.
A $3 billion, 16-year global campaign to eradicate polio has reduced cases of the disease from 350,000 in 1988 to fewer than 1,000 last year.
Among challenges facing anti-polio campaigners is raising the millions of dollars to help fund the upcoming 21-country immunization drive, Aylward said.
In Niger which reported a tenfold increase in cases for 2003 over 2002 work is needed to increase the proportion of children being reached by the vaccination campaigns, said David Heymann, head of WHO’s polio eradication program.
Polio usually infects children under the age of 5 through contaminated drinking water and attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and, in some cases, death.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Source: ABCNews.com
URL: http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Living/ap20040517_…/p>