Wednesday, February 25, 2004
A 10-nation emergency vaccine effort has begun.
KANOUA, Ivory Coast (AP) -- Families gathered under the shade of a huge tree in the village square. They looked on cautiously at a half-dozen anti-polio campaigners, who arrived shouting through a loudspeaker: "Bring your children! It will be very quick!"
But a crowd quickly developed, as mothers and fathers dragged crying children into the square -- hauling every child forward to receive two drops of oral vaccine upon their tongues.
More than 30,000 health workers are taking part in Ivory Coast's anti-polio drive, part of a massive 10-nation emergency effort aimed at blocking a polio outbreak spreading from northern Nigeria.
Immunization ban
Three predominantly Islamic states in Nigeria's north have banned door-to-door polio immunization since October, calling it a U.S. plot to spread AIDS or infertility among Muslims.
The World Health Organization says the ban has helped spread polio back into seven African countries where it had been eradicated, and threatens global efforts to wipe out the crippling disease entirely by 2005.
WHO and others -- hoping to contain the outbreak -- launched their drive Monday to inoculate 63 million children across west and central Africa. In Ivory Coast, the aim is to vaccinate 4.6 million children in four days.
Local officials said it has been successful so far -- in Ivory Coast, resuming vaccination efforts interrupted by a 9-month civil war broke out in the cocoa-rich country in September 2002.
Anti-polio campaigns, usually a yearly affair, had been called off in the rebel-held north of Ivory Coast in 2002 and 2003. Unrest also hindered vaccinations in parts of the government-controlled south.
In February, Ivory Coast reported its first case of polio in four years -- a local strain, evidently not from Nigeria.
A victim knows
"This medicine is good," said Veronique Kouadio, 19, holding her 6-month-old baby, Jean-Marc, in the village square of Kanoua, 10 miles from the main rebel stronghold of Bouake.
Marcel Kouassi, a polio victim in his 20s in the nearby village of Niangban, said the vaccination campaign was "a very good idea. A tremendous one."
"People have the opportunity to avoid my own problem," said Kouassi, whose shriveled legs force him to rely on a wheelchair to move around.
Another polio victim in the village, this one a 10-year-old boy, wasn't lucky enough to have a wheelchair. He dragged himself along the ground with his arms, with the utmost difficulty.
Despite reports of opposition to the campaign in some villages -- due to rumors that it was part of a conspiracy by Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo to kill off his political opponents -- health workers around Bouake said they had experienced very few obstacles.
The predominantly Muslim rebels, who triggered the civil war with a failed coup d'etat in 2002, allowed the polio campaign's vehicles to pass quickly through roadblocks set up across the highway leading into Bouake, Ivory Coast's second-largest city.
The general acceptance of the campaign among Muslims and Christians in Ivory Coast stands in stark contrast to Nigeria, which accounted for close to half the polio cases worldwide in 2003.
Only 6 polio countries
WHO's 16-year effort had reduced polio to six countries -- Nigeria, Niger, Egypt, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Polio cases fell from 350,000 annually in 1988 to fewer than 1,000 last year.
Apart from Nigeria and Ivory Coast, Africa's anti-polio campaign is taking place in eight other nations: Ghana, Togo, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic and Chad.