Nigerian official defends boycott of polio vaccine

Test results on the vaccine need to be explained, the governor said.
KANO, Nigeria (AP) -- A Nigerian state governor defended a boycott of a polio immunization campaign, asserting a spreading outbreak of the disease was a "lesser of two evils" than rendering women infertile with vaccines that some Islamic leaders have deemed a U.S. plot against Muslims.
Kano state governor Ibrahim Shekarau told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he "regrets reports" that delaying vaccinations is worsening a polio epidemic that U.N. officials say is spreading across Nigeria's borders and threatening the goal of eradicating the disease by 2005.
The World Health Organization and others -- hoping to contain the outbreak -- launched a drive Monday to inoculate 63 million children in 10 west and central African nations, including Nigeria.
Banned
Door-to-door vaccinations have been banned in Kano, Zamfara and Niger -- three predominantly Islamic states in northern Nigeria -- since last October, with critics calling the immunization campaign a U.S. plot to spread AIDS or infertility among Muslims.
Shekarau said he believes "it is a lesser of two evils to sacrifice two, three, four, five, even 10 children [to polio] than allow hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of girl-children likely to be rendered infertile."
Tests carried out on the vaccine by his state's scientists last year found traces of hormones that "we want explained," the governor added.
His comments came as Bauchi, another predominantly Muslim state, on Wednesday rejoined the four-day immunization campaign.
United Nations Children's Fund spokesman Gerrit Beger said vaccinators were "quite successful" in Bauchi, where he said officials allowed the campaign to begin Wednesday morning.
Bauchi had just two days earlier suspended participation in the vaccine drive. Reasons for its apparent reversal were unclear, and officials there could not be reached to comment.
U.N. officials have declared that Kano is the epicenter of a polio outbreak spreading from Nigeria to at least seven other African nations where the disease had been eliminated.
Battling the disease
The disease, caused by the human poliovirus, has been eradicated in Europe, the Americas, much of Asia and Australia. It usually infects children under the age of five through contaminated drinking water and attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and, in some cases, death.
A 16-year, multibillion dollar international immunization effort has reduced the number of victims disabled by the disease from 350,000 in 1988 to less than 1,000 last year.
Yet nearly one-half of those are in Nigeria, where several predominantly Muslim states have forbidden health workers to participate in the program to distribute the vaccines door-to-door, which ends today.